The Eye of the Storm
by attackamazon
Summary: Sequel to The Gift. The war is over, but the violence has only just begun. Ulfric is set to be High King alongside an unwilling Elisif. The Dragonborn and Galmar Stone-fist must find a way to keep the unrest in Solitude from exploding around them all like a powder keg. At the same time, they must come to terms with what it means to love and be loved by each other.
1. Solitude

_Sequel to The Gift. You may want to read that story first. I've tried to make this one as stand-alone as possible, but likely you'll enjoy it more if you know the story up to this point._

 _The Gift ends with a sort of short epilogue to tie up the story. In the years since writing it, I've always wanted to come back and tell the story of what happened in between the resolution and the happily ever after. This is that story. I have it completed, I'm just re-editing the final chapter because I'm a perfectionist. It should be out soon._

 _**WARNING: there are allusions to past child abuse and a brief description of a torture scene in this chapter. Read safely.**_

* * *

Solitude had changed since the war.

Ashildr scanned the gathered crowd tensely through the oculars of her dragonplate helm as she rode through the subjugated city at Ulfric's side. There were hundreds of Stormcloak soldiers in parade behind them and thousands more garrisoned in the city, but it was impossible to tell what dangers awaited them in the capitol and everyone was on high alert. Although the Stormcloaks and a dedicated minority of "True Nord" civilians cheered and called out for Ulfric as he passed, most of the faces that lined the streets of the city were less than joyful.

Ulfric's contingent was parading into a wasps' nest of complicated loyalties and sedition that seethed so close to the surface that it could be felt in the very air. Every one of them - from Ulfric to his general Galmar Stonefist and right down to the dullest of the footsoldiers - knew it. It would once again fall to the Dragonborn to help win Ulfric's war for him, although this time it would be a war of influence and persuasion instead of blood.

There would be blood, too, inevitably.

Ashildr's sharp senses snapped her gaze on to a figure at the back of the crowd. A tanned face beneath a reddish-brown hood and dark eyes that were trained with steely concentration on Ulfric stood out from the others. His hands were hidden, but she could see him working covertly with something obscured by the bodies in front of him.

" **Zun Haal Viik!** "

Instantly, before he could finish raising the crossbow, Ashildr's Thuum rended the crowd and ripped the weapon from the insurgent's hands, flinging it away into the resulting scatter of bodies and rushing feet. The horses startled, but Ulfric and his officers were experienced cavalrymen and kept their seat. Ashildr had drawn her blade in a flash along with the Shout, ready to close on the would-be assassin, but she needn't have bothered. The Stormcloak guards descended on the man at once like a pack of wolves, cutting off his furious scream of " _Death to the Usurper!_ " beneath a pile of bludgeoning bodies.

She watched impassionately as the guards secured the now limp figure and began to drag it away before turning to meet Ulfric's and Galmar's gaze in turn and exchanging a curt nod. The situation was handled. The triumphal entry could resume, perhaps at a faster pace, leaving the citizens to recover in their wake. Someone would get a dressing down or worse later for failing to notice a weapon in the crowd, Ashildr knew, but over all the parade was a success.

The High King had come to Solitude whether his enemies liked it or not.

Once they reached the Palace and dismounted, Ashildr felt Ulfric's hand clap on her shoulder and turned to find him grinning at her, exhilarated and pleased.

"Once again I owe you my life, Dragonborn. Talos favors us both this day."

The Jarl of Windhelm was as handsome as ever with his blue eyes and well-sculpted features. Once upon a time, Ashildr would have thrilled with pleasure at his touch, but no longer. That avenue was firmly closed. She merely smiled instead and her eyes slid to the side, noting the figure of Elisif the Fair as the younger woman emerged from the shaded portico with her maids and housecarl in tow to cast a chilly glare over the scene.

Ashildr had met the former High Queen once before when she had first come to Solitude back in those dark and confusing first days as the Dragonborn. The Legion General Tullius had wanted an explanation about the Dragonborn business with an eye to negotiating a contract, but Ashildr - still a sellsword at that time - had taken a few small jobs for the court to tide her over while she considered the terms. Even then, she had known that Elisif was doomed. The girl was sincere and dedicated and her people were fond of her, but it was obvious to Ashildr that there was no real talent for command there and her courtiers were already starting to hedge their bets with the opposition. Even if the Imperials had won the war, there was no way she would have retained the throne for long. Looking at Elisif's stoic, bloodless expression now, Ashildr wondered if the girl would have preferred Tullius' fate to the one that awaited her.

Ashildr drew back to stand beside Galmar as Ulfric's attention turned to greeting Elisif. She exchanged a glance with the housecarl and rolled her eyes as if to say, _You know Ulfric, dramatic as ever._

He raised a thick blond eyebrow humorously at her in return and they watched their Jarl approach his sworn enemy and future bride before following the ill-matched pair into the Palace to begin the difficult work of reunification. Ashildr had to smirk as she saw Ulfric reach to lay a hand on the young woman's back in the fashion of a chivalrous bridegroom only for Elisif to tense like a bowstring and step silently and gracefully away.

Before it was over, Ashildr thought, Ulfric was going to regret this peace through matrimony business. If she had not already been through that wrenching ordeal herself, she might have laughed.

~~0~~

Royalty, it turned out, did have its perks.

The chamber that the palace chatelaine had prepared for Ashildr and Galmar was directly next to Ulfric's master suite and featured tall, airy glass windows that looked out over the expanse of sea cliffs that surrounded the castle. Galmar would have been assigned a chamber near Ulfric's anyway in order to carry out his duties as chief military advisor and bodyguard, but the staff seemed to have taken extra pains to please the Dragonborn and their new king's adopted kinswoman.

A fire was already laid and crackling in the hearth when, after what seemed like hours of meeting, greeting, and listening to the barbed compliments of courtiers, Ashildr was finally able to close the door behind her and breathe a sigh of relief. Gone were the days when all her patrons had expected of her was that she kill anyone who got in their way in exchange for a hefty sum of gold. She had suggested a return to that tactic to Ulfric under her breath during dinner, but he had only laughed. Deep down, he enjoyed all this posturing and pantomime. It was his weapon just as much as his sword or his Voice, whereas Ashildr would have rather killed a dozen more world-eating dragons than spend an evening at court.

By the time Galmar arrived from his final briefing of the evening - at which he had no doubt put the fear of Talos into the guards lest a repeat of that afternoon's mistake occur - Ashildr had taken her hair down and was carefully shining her boots next to the fire, letting the bit of tallow she was working into the leather soften in the heat of the flames as the familiar, rhythmic work settled her mind. She looked up and smiled weakly, feeling a different tension return as she watched him begin to shuck off his bear-hide and steel armor.

Her husband. It had been nearly two months now since she had married Galmar. The first few weeks had passed in a torturous fog of outrage, betrayal, and frustration at having allowed Ulfric and his council to coerce her into the arrangement in the first place. Ulfric had courted her during the war, but when the fighting was done, so was the budding relationship. She was too powerful in her own right as the Dragonborn. Neither the difficult political landscape nor Ulfric's pride would have allowed him to be eclipsed by his wife.

Although Ulfric still needed her at court and had honored her with his family name and a place of influence at his side, there had been too many rumors about their relationship for her not to be a threat to any future marriage alliance. If she had not finally acquiesced to the arranged marriage at Ulfric's urging, if she had told his councilors to go fuck themselves when they had cornered her with veiled threats and intimations of what could happen to her and those she cared about if she refused, then Ashildr had no doubt that a vial of poison would have swiftly found its way into her mead or worse, even without Ulfric's sanction

The situation, it turned out, was even more complex still. Far from suffering the marriage out of duty, Galmar had stepped in to fill the role of husband of his own choice - partly out of loyalty to Ulfric, partly to shield his colleague from the worst of what could have befallen her, but also in part because he wanted her for her own sake. They had spent months together fighting, planning, eating, and sleeping in the cold during the war. In that time, by his own admission, his feelings for her had turned from simple comradery into something much more. After the shock, the heartbreak, the ugly silence, the fights, and finally the understanding, Ashildr had discovered that the same was true for her as well.

The revelation came with its own complications.

"That was quick work out there today," Galmar remarked appreciately as he hefted his cuirass onto the armor rack next to her dragonplate and stretched his tight shoulders. "That bastard would have had at least one good shot before the guards got to him if it weren't for you."

The smile he turned on her was easy, warm, and genuine. She saw the irritation of the day bleed out of his expression, his brow unknitting and softening when he looked at her, and it pulled at something inside of Ashildr that she had long believed non-existent. There was nothing in her experience to tell her how to respond. She tried to shrug the feeling away.

"Ulfric was lucky. He might not be lucky next time. Did the guards get anything out of the assassin?"

"Dead," Galmar admitted with a disappointed curl of his lips. "Never woke up from the beating they gave him. Can't blame the boys for being overzealous where Ulfric is concerned, but I've had a talk with their commanders. The spies are tracking down any information about the man now. We'll know in a day or two if he so much as shat within the city walls."

With a grunt, the big housecarl lowered himself stiffly down on the edge of the bed facing her and began to remove his own boots. She watched him uncertainly. Only a day had passed since they had fought and their respective feelings for each other had finally spilled out into the open. They had been too weary the previous night to do anything but sleep, curled together in the narrow bed of the Dragonbridge inn, and so this was the first time since that they had been properly alone. Ashildr was at a loss.

She had never been loved before. It was a strange, giddy, frightening feeling.

 _If you think you can love me, stay with me_ , he had urged. _You trusted me during the war. Trust me now._

She would try. If this failed, as the dour suspicion in the back of her mind told her it would eventually, then at least she would have made the attempt at happiness.

"I wouldn't put it past Elisif, either. You saw the way she looked at Ulfric."

Galmar huffed a long, weary sigh and shook his head.

"I warned him. I told him he should have her exiled down to Cyrodiil with the prisoner exchange, but he seems to think having her as a consort will satisfy her supporters. We've had her serving maids and the kitchen staff replaced. Nothing goes into that bedchamber without one of our stewards checking it over. Once we're back in Windhelm away from this pit of snakes, the danger will be less. I still wouldn't want to be Ulfric on the wedding night. As cold as she is, he'll freeze to death in that bed."

Ashildr couldn't suppress a snort of laughter, adding with a pointed glance, "Well, you would know the feeling."

The housecarl's smile split into a facetious grin.

"If anything, Dragonborn, I was afraid you'd roast me alive with that temper of yours."

"Ashildr," she corrected him gently. The title had never sat well with her and it seemed far too formal now with everything that had passed between them. "We're beyond ceremony here, I think."

The small concession seemed to please him. Galmar tossed his boots to the end of the bed and leaned on his knees, regarding her.

"It wasn't the time for us yet on our first night. You had a right to your anger. It wasn't my place to try to take it from you. When this business with the Moot and the coronation is over and Ulfric can spare us, we'll find a few days to ride out somewhere and do it justice."

The image of what he was suggesting - of Galmar and her alone in a firelit room with nothing between them this time and no one to interrupt - made a tight heat begin to spread through Ashildr's stomach. It would not be the first time. Two nights ago, with the rain and wind raking over the military encampment and with no other distraction but each other, the tight grip that she had kept clenched around her heart and her desire had finally slipped and it had brought them to this unfamiliar borderland where she could no longer retreat from Galmar but neither did she know how to approach him.

It seemed ridiculous to wait after they had already started down that path. However uncertain she was that this would work in the end, she was no doe-eyed virgin to be scandalized by a man's venial desires.

"We don't have to make a show of it, Galmar," she replied as she tried to hedge the discomfort out of her voice with a shrug. "If you want me, I'm game enough. I know sod all about marriage, but that part, at least, I can do."

He rose from the bed and approached her. Ashildr prepared herself to feel his hands slide onto her body, both wanting that touch again and fearing the loss of control over the small, yearning animal thing within her that Galmar always seemed to wake now whenever they were close. She smelled the faint musk of his skin and the residual earthy scent of leather and oil as he leaned down, his hands instead lacing into her hair as he kissed her.

It was their bargain - one kiss every night, a shared bed and table, and her promise to consider staying in exchange for his aid if she decided to leave - but the bargain no longer seemed necessary and she had all but forgotten it in the deluge of events over last few days. She returned the kiss with genuine feeling, remembering their bodies twined together in the darkness of the tent and feeling the ache for that release return over her like a fever. Galmar, though, pulled back as she moved to help him from his tunic.

"I do want you," he murmured to her before taking her hands and raising her knuckles to his lips, "but I want more of you than just this. When your heart is in it, we'll go again. For now, be with me."

Ashildr looked up into his face, the shrewd mercenary that still lived under her skin weighing his intent, and allowed some of the tension that had been building in her chest to relax a little under the earnestness of his expression.

"What do you suggest?" she acquiesced.

He turned from her a walked towards the sideboard in the room. After a few seconds of hunting, he came up with a bottle of mead.

"There's a tradition in Skyrim of newlyweds drinking mead together every night for a month after the wedding. We're late for it, but better late than never. I didn't have the chance to court you as I should have done. I thought we might fix that."

The idea of the old bear trying to charm her like some love-sick young pup forced a smile out of Ashildr and she warmed to the novelty of the suggestion. She settled down onto the soft bed in a crossed-legged position and accepted a cup of mead from Galmar as he poured for them and took up the place next to her. She raised it in salute.

"To a fresh start - for us and for Skyrim?"

"I'll drink to that."

They sipped the sweet burn of the liquor in silence for a moment, appreciating something nice after a taxing day. Galmar leaned back against the headboard and cast a game expression at her.

"Tradition has it that the mead brings a couple closer together. Liquid courage for the wedding night is my guess."

"We're going to need a lot more than one bottle if you want me drunk enough to take advantage of," Ashildr quipped at him over the rim of her cup and Galmar chuckled.

"I've worse things in mind for you. I thought we might talk instead," he bantered back, warming to the exercise, and then relented. "We know each other as soldiers. I want to know you better than that."

She tried to seem nonchalant about the suggestion, but it rekindled that undercurrent of anxiety that she had been feeling all throughout the last day. There was little in her life that would make for a buoyant conversation. Only the priest Erandur, her closest friend in Skyrim and traveling companion before Ashildr had enlisted in Ulfric's war, had heard the extent of her story. She missed the Dunmer's company often these days, but now more than ever. His prediction that she would find this marriage to be something more than an aggravating affront had proven true enough. Mara never bestowed bad gifts, he had told her. In her mind, she conjured his calm voice, knowing already the advice he would have given her under the circumstances.

 _You wanted a different life. Now you have it. Get to it._

"What do you want to know?"

He considered for a moment, rolling the burn of the mead through his mouth as he composed his question.

"You didn't give a damn about the cause in the beginning, just the contract. What was the end game? What was the plan when the war was over?"

The question caught her off guard. For most of her life, survival had been the goal of Ashildr's work - the means to scrape together enough resources to stay alive and out of the gutter. However, she had not actually needed either Ulfric's or Tullius' gold when she finally took a side in the war. The wealth that she had gathered during her travels as the Dragonborn alone would have allowed her a comfortable retirement.

She had even attempted to leave the work briefly. Her contracts for the Solitude court had earned her a cushy mansion in the Palace district. For a fortnight, she had lived the settled urban life - idling on her balcony over the sea, strolling through the market with the mirth of someone who had time to linger over her purchases, and trying to forget that she had ever been a soldier. When that failed, she had decamped to the simpler setting of her cottage in Whiterun and spent another week hunting in the hills around the city before the restlessness finally overcame her.

In the end, settled life had proved intolerable. The emptiness of her days spiraled into unchanneled aggression that had driven her back into her armor and out onto the battlefield again. Whatever it was that allowed the civilians around her to go about their lives in peace, it seemed to have been burned out of Ashildr long ago. She had made her way to Windhelm and struck a pact with Ulfric more out of desperate need for purpose and function than gold.

"I don't really know," she admitted at last with some difficulty and frowned at the golden liquid in her cup.

She didn't want to conceal the truth from Galmar anymore. She had promised him that much, but the words to describe what she had felt all those months ago did not come easily.

"I had always thought that if I could get ahead of the game - if I could just get enough coin together - I could settle somewhere. Find a house, get a dog, maybe run a tavern or a farm, and put my sword down for good."

She glanced up to see Galmar's expression crease with a very familiar pain as he listened.

"But you couldn't. So, you came to us," he grunted, finishing her thought for her.

She raised her eyebrows in silent acknowledgement, realizing that Galmar must have had similar thoughts throughout his years in the Legion and Ulfric's service, and finished the remainder of her drink.

"Why forge a blade if you're going to leave it in its scabbard on the wall? I don't think I cared about what came next. After Alduin and Sovngarde, everything was a fog for awhile. I had solid work with Ulfric - better than what I was doing before I came to Skyrim. You were a good commander. I had nothing to complain about but the cold. In the end, the two of you managed to convince me that it was a worthy cause."

"The two of us?" the housecarl asked, clearly surprised.

She had never said as much to Galmar, but Ulfric wasn't the only reason Ashildr had chosen to side with the Stormcloaks. She gave him weak half-smile.

"Ulfric's got a talent for making people believe in him, but he's an idealist. One man's Voice and vision weren't going to push back the Legion." She shrugged. "You, now - you were out there putting your skin on the line for him. A man like you doesn't risk his life on a fight he can't win. Ulfric got my attention, I'll admit, but I took a risk on him because he had a general of your caliber minding his war for him."

The older soldier gazed at her for a long moment. She saw his expression slowly change, opening in a way that she hadn't seen since that moment of relief when the last siege of the war was finished. His job was a somewhat thankless one, she knew. Ulfric was good at rewarding his supporters, but it was always Ulfric who was center stage. It was Ulfric who was accorded all the success. The idea that she had seen Galmar's work for what it was, even hidden beneath Ulfric's shadow, had clearly touched the housecarl.

At last, he refilled their cups and raised his to her silently before tossing it back.

"Your turn, now," he told her. "Ask what you will."

Ashildr pondered. There were so many issues left unfinished - so much that she did not know. Ulfric's account of the situation that had brought her and Galmar together was probably embellished, but she had the feeling that he had told her as much of the truth as she would ever know. At the end of the day, she decided, she had heard all that she needed to hear about it already. Nothing good would come of digging further into that den of Daedra.

One question that had burned in the back of her brain since Galmar had first admitted that he was in love with her leapt out from the others.

"Why didn't you tell me that you had feelings for me before the wedding?" she asked him, raising the difficult subject in the waiting silence before her better judgement could cut it off.

He stared at the horn cup in his hands, rolling the smooth surface through his fingers for a long few seconds before looking up at her.

"Would you have felt less betrayed if I had?"

Not a chance, she knew. Remembering those chaotic few days when she had torn back into Windhelm from the southern front and demanded an explanation for the rumors that had reached her, Ashildr was forced to concede the point. Galmar had done everything possible to avoid her during the initial shock. She did not know what she would have done if she had been able to confront him, but she knew it would not have been pretty.

"Fair enough," she admitted. "I guess what I want to know is when it started. I never knew you thought of me as anything but your second."

Galmar turned so that he was facing her. He studied her frankly, his eyes raking over her as if he were remembering something bittersweet.

"The first time you came to the Palace, I knew you were something I had never seen before, Dragonborn aside. Then I saw you fight at Korvanjund. You were a thing of beauty - swift, smart, and deadly. The fiercest woman I had ever met. Every day after that made me want you more - but I knew Ulfric had plans for you and by that time you already had eyes for him. Oaths and long friendship tie me to Ulfric. I had my suspicions about what he was doing, but it wasn't for me to stand in his way. Even leaving him out of it, we had a job to do. I needed your head in the fight."

The reminder that she had once fallen for Ulfric's flattery sent a chord of embarrassment shivering through Ashildr. In hindsight, she had to admit that the Stormcloak Jarl had set a clever trap to catch her. She would never have listened to his political rhetoric, but the man had a charm and charisma that had made her pay attention to him in other ways and he had pressed that advantage to the full. He had never made her any promises, never confessed any flowery feelings or overstepped the bounds of decency, but he had certainly kept her hooked on an undercurrent of flirtation, desire, and hints about the future. Maybe he had even believed it himself in the beginning.

One of Galmar's comments piqued her curiosity, though. Ashildr turned on the bed, slowly with the gravity of the mead humming through her veins. She wanted to be able to read his face when he answered.

"You had suspicions," she repeated. "You knew Ulfric was stringing me along?"

For his part, Galmar did not blink in the face of the accusation. He nodded his agreement, chagrined.

"I'd lay down my life for Ulfric, but I know my friend," he told her, showing a hint of a scowl at some troublesome thought. "He was courting an ornament, not a woman. I had a feeling you'd be more woman than he bargained on in the end."

He refilled their cups one last time, draining the bottle and setting it aside. The fire was burning down in the hearth and Ashildr could feel the lateness of the hour, but she sat with rapt attention. She had already more or less forgiven Ulfric - it would never have worked out between them anyway - but she knew that she needed to hear this from Galmar. His brow knit with regret as he continued.

"For what it's worth, I told him he'd done badly by you and he agreed. He never wanted your pain. The wedding, the house, gainsaying his council to match you to me instead of some stranger - that was his way of making amends. We should have brought you in on it. You deserved the choice. I'm bound to keep Ulfric's secrets, but I wasn't happy to keep that one. That wasn't how I wanted to come in to your life."

She had no doubt that Galmar was telling the truth. Ashildr felt the last residue of her anger disperse, vindicated finally by his admission that she should have been allowed to choose for herself. Ulfric could be a self-centered prick at times, but she didn't believe that there had been anything malicious in his decisions. As much as she resented the way he had treated her, he had genuinely been trying to find the best solution for the most amount of people. For Galmar, just as for her, there had been no good options.

"How did you want to come to me?" she asked.

The question had the desired effect. The brooding frown on his face lifted as his polished-steel gaze moved back outwards from his thoughts to settle on her face. The smile that formed as he looked at her, perhaps imagining another evening that might have been under different circumstances, made her begin to gently ache within.

"As we are now. A bottle of mead and my heart in my hands. I wanted to offer you a life with me, not force it on you. I haven't got Ulfric's looks or his title or his talent for words, but I don't need my woman to always be a rung or two beneath me looking up either. Fight your battles, Ashildr. Roam where you will. Just come back to share my hearth and my bed when you're done."

The shadows had closed in thickly along the walls while they talked. Ashildr took the cups and set them aside while Galmar washed his face and added a couple of logs to the fire for the night. Finally, she slid beneath the heavy furs and soft sheets of the four-post bed and felt Galmar do the same on the other side.

Morning would come early and tomorrow would be another ordeal. In the comfortable darkness, she felt Galmar turn onto his side and, by growing habit, she shifted accordingly. His heavy hand slid up the curve of her hip and ribs, lingering for a moment before his arm encircle her. She leaned back against his chest and, tentatively, allowed one of her hands to find his beneath the furs. She was reminded of the night that she had woken from the roaring horror of one of her nightmares and felt him there, his arms around her in the dark as he whispered safety to her until the vision of blood, sand, and death subsided.

"I would have liked to hear that offer," she admitted at last, feeling Galmar's fingers close around hers before they both drifted into the silent twilight of sleep..

~~0~~

"You're bloody kidding me."

Ashildr stood stunned in the Palace study facing Galmar and Ulfric, who was seated behind the great oak desk and looking up at her with a congenial smile. Galmar's expression was as inscrutable as always, but she was beginning to be familiar enough with his moods to tell that he was trying very hard not to laugh.

She gestured at herself with both hands, highlighting her soldier's leathers, plated gambeson, and the sword and daggers at her belt as if these things might have gone unnoticed.

"Do I look like a lady in waiting?"

Ulfric sat back in his chair, his hands open in a gesture of acknowledgement and placation.

"I know it's not your usual fare, Dragonborn, but it's only until I can decide on a suitable replacement for Elisif's housecarl. She needs protection and I need protection from any plots that she might have in play at the same time. No one can challenge my esteem for Elisif if I've assigned the Dragonborn herself to ensure my lady's safety. You would be expected to attend on her as my nearest kinswoman besides. It will only be for a few days."

Ashildr glanced beyond Ulfric to Galmar, who allowed his hard public expression to crack just enough to give her an amused lift of the eyebrow and a faint shrug.

 _The things we do for duty_ , he seemed to say.

 _Easy enough for you, you're not being sent into a den of sharp-tongued harpies_ , Ashildr thought back grumpily.

Ulfric was watching her with an expectant expression - good humored with her as always, but she knew there were limits and she had, after all, sworn her sword to his service. If this was how he wanted to deploy it, so be it. Ashildr stifled a sigh and spread her palms, bending in an exaggerated, elaborate bow of the kind that she had seen Elisif's simpering courtiers perform.

"As my king commands," she pronounced dryly.

Although Ulfric had, in a fit of gallantry, attempted to make Elisif remain in the Palace's master chambers while he slept elsewhere until the wedding, the former queen had immediately removed herself to a smaller suite as far away from Ulfric's quarters as possible. Ashildr approached the door, closed her eyes for moment to steel herself, and then knocked.

The attendant that opened the door was a pretty feminine thing - all perfectly coiffed hair, willowy figure, and expensive brocade. Ashildr didn't remember the girl's name, but she recognized her as Elisif's lady's maid. The maid's brown eyes widened slightly with recognition as they lit on Ashildr's face, but then they narrowed cooly.

So that was how it was going to be.

"I've been sent to serve in place of Elisif's housecarl until a replacement can be arranged," Ashildr rapped out in the gruff tones she used when conducting military business.

Better they see her as a put-upon soldier with a job to do than Ulfric's spy.

Without a word, the girl turned sharply back into the room for a moment and then opened the door to allow Ashildr entrance.

The chamber beyond was not large, but expensively furnished. It had likely been intended to house ambassadors and other dignitaries visiting the Solitude court. That Elisif would find herself living in the guest quarters of her own home now seemed yet another sad blow, but Ashildr was careful to keep her expression neutral. She was here on business and getting entangled in Elisif's misfortunes was not part of it.

The once and future queen was sitting before a polished silver mirror in the soft morning light from the windows as she put the finishing touches on her hair.

"Your presence is unnecessary, Dragonborn," she stated calmly. "I already have a housecarl with whom I am quite satisfied."

Elisif was not called 'the Fair" for nothing. She was a few years younger than Ashildr with long golden-brown hair that fell in a cascade down her back to her waist. Her complexion was as pale and perfect as moonlight and the eyes that reflected back at Ashildr in the surface of the mirror were clear and sharp like arrowheads cut from emerald. Today, she was clothed in dark blues and purples - not quite mourning attire, but similar enough to be taken as unspoken commentary on her betrothed's arrival.

Ashildr did not venture far into the room, but she did affect a slight bow, this time without the sarcasm she had shown Ulfric. Elisif, though she was no longer High Queen, was still the Jarl of Solitude and even if Ashildr had been disinclined to respect the rank there was no satisfaction in kicking a woman while she was down.

"I have my orders, my lady. You'll have another housecarl within a few days, but in the meantime the High King can't allow you to go unprotected. I will be discrete."

The younger woman turned with elegant grace and fixed Ashildr with an expression colder than the icy winter wind on the Sea of Ghosts.

"Skyrim," Elisif pronounced, as if gritting the words between her teeth, "has no High King at present."

Technically, she was correct. Ulfric had won the war, but the Moot had yet to begin. It would only be a matter of days and there was no chance that it would not be Ulfric on Skyrim's high seat in the end, but it seemed that Elisif was not about to cede even an inch of ground that she did not have to. Rather than debate, Ashildr only nodded her acquiescence and remained silent.

The morning waxed on despite the tension that surrounded the intruder in the ranks of Elisif and her minders. Ashildr followed the ladies through their routine, staying close enough to her charge that onlookers could see the Dragonborn accompanying Ulfric's soon-to-be bride, but far enough aside that she would not be confused for a participant in Elisif's affairs. She needed to be seen, not heard, and that was fine by Ashildr.

Far from the life of relative leisure that Ashildr had expected, the former queen's schedule was merciless. There was a breakfast with the wives and daughters of the visiting Jarls in which Elisif smiled graciously and made polite if somewhat distant conversation, followed by a gown fitting with the staff of Radiant Raiment for her wedding attire. Still before noon, there were meetings with the counselors who remained part of the city government to go over expenses, trade figures from the port, and matters of security. Ashildr stood silently through it all, her input rarely required, but she took the opportunity to reassess the woman who she very well could have served under different circumstances.

Elisif still relied upon the experience of her advisors in matters of practical governance, but her grasp of the delicate social environment at court was impressive. Ashildr watched her simultaneously charm and snub the new women who would be her social set during Ulfric's reign, allowing them close enough to feel included but never close enough to be comfortable. She noted the way that Elisif conferred with the seamstresses during the fitting, debating the subtle messages of cut, color, and accoutrement. Ashildr was not blind to the cutting remarks that the former queen was sending her way, either, under the guise of playful chatter with her attendants.

It was true enough that Elisif would not have been a skilled ruler in her own right, but she must have been a formidable consort for Torygg before his death, Ashildr surmised. If Ulfric could find a way to cancel out her hatred, he might end up with a queen for the ages after all.

The afternoon was taken up with audiences - anxious merchants, courtiers, and dignitaries scrambling to find their place in the new social order. Rather than hear the petitions in the great hall as she would have previously done, Elisif instead held her small court more informally in the Palace's immaculate garden. This was not by accident. Ulfric held the throne of Skyrim in trust until the Moot could formally decide. Elisif would not share an usurper's throne until she was left no other choice.

Finally, with the afternoon drawing down and a line of petitioners still waiting, Ashildr noted the silent signal pass wearily between Elisif and her steward Falk Firebeard - still nominally Solitude's seneschal until Ulfric decided to replace him. Falk made a few ceremonial statements to close the court and Ashildr moved carefully up to Elisif's side to escort her back into the Palace as the crowd of disappointed courtiers parted.

"Your majesty," a Nord called out above the others, apparently not to be denied. "Are we to have no answer then? How can your people stand if their queen sees fit to wed and bed the Usurper? Is Skyrim to be doubly betrayed by both the Dragonborn and our High Queen?"

The man was unfamiliar to Ashildr, but his build and the way he stood - cocked a little in his stance as if he were used to wearing an ax at his belt - belied the merchant's garb he wore. This was a soldier in civilian clothes. Ashildr moved quickly to intercept the hand that reached for Elisif's arm and snatched it by the wrist, placing herself deftly between the malcontent and the Jarl.

"I think you'd best keep your hands to yourself and your tongue in your head if you don't want to lose them," Ashildr growled at the man stiffly, meeting his angry blue eyes with a dangerous glare.

He spit in her face.

"Curse your name for what you've done to us, Dragonborn," he snarled back at her even as the guards grabbed his shoulders and hauled him back. "You were to save Skyrim, not hand it to murderers and thieves. May you never see the halls of Sovngarde!"

Ashildr wiped the spittle from her cheek and rapped out her command to the guards sharply.

"Put him in the cells and watch him. Inform Galmar Stone-fist that I've sent him a live fool to interrogate this time."

To the belligerent Nord, for the benefit of the shocked crowd, she bared her teeth in a menacing grin and saw the man pale slightly.

"I've already walked the halls of Sovngarde, kinsman. And so will you before the day is out, I'll wager."

Brooking no resistance and finding none besides, she took Elisif's elbow then and escorted her quickly to safety within the Palace walls before another word could be said.

~~0~~

By the time Ashildr's work was done for the day, the moons were high overhead. She was bone-tired, but a dull and unsettling energy still boiled within her as she walked with Galmar from the dark ramparts of Castle Dour back to the Blue Palace.

The dissident loyalist that had been stupid enough to speak his mind and spit on her in Elisif's court that day had indeed been dispatched to Sovngarde, but not before he had screamed his secrets out under torture in the dungeons beneath the castle. As the second most prominent member of Ulfric's personal guard, she had stood with Galmar and listened as the interrogator, with the aid of heated blades and other gruesome implements, finally broke through the poor bastard's resistance at last. A half-dozen names hardly seemed worth the ravages inflicted on the Nord's body, but it was a place to start.

As someone ever at risk of capture, torture had never sat well with Ashildr but nothing about war and its aftermath was pretty or clean. War wasn't the pageantry and heroics of the bardic tales. War was blood and pain and suffering in the hopes that one day the people - the good people, the ones with their humanity still in tact beyond the carnage - would be safe. What price was one man's life and sanity for that? The ethical calculus of that question was beyond her skill to answer. What was practical had always won the day for Ashildr and anything that remained could be drowned in the bottom of a bottle. For awhile.

Galmar was in a pensive mood, too. His day had been just as stressful as her own. When they reached their room, he leaned back against the closed door with a sigh, his helm thumping against the wood as he gazed upward into the dark rafters.

"Long day, dear?" Ashildr asked, feigning the sweet-tempered wife as she unbuckled her sword-belt and hung it on the wall by the bed.

"We should have burned this damned city to the ground when we had the chance," the housecarl grumbled as he moved to start disarming.

Sympathetic to the feeling, Ashildr approached him and began to help him with his armor. She had worn light gear today since she had expected to be at court, but Galmar always wore his full officer's steel and bear-skins. He relaxed at her touch, allowing her to tackle the difficult straps beneath his arms and set the pieces aside on their rack next to her dragonplate.

 _The dragon and the bear in domestic tranquility_ , she thought with a sudden stab of tired humor.

Galmar was watching her with a curious expression as she worked. She had recounted her report to Ulfric and him earlier, but they were alone now.

"About the incident at court," he began finally. "That milkdrinker actually spit on you?"

"He did," she grunted as she freed him from his cuirass at last and hefted it's weight onto the rack. "But he's dead now and I'm not. I'll let him have that one."

The big man scowled darkly at the thought.

"If he wasn't already dead, he soon would be for that. You can handle yourself, but anyone who raises a hand to you will have me to deal with afterward."

Ashildr chuckled, but his protective vehemence was touching all the same.

"What's left of them anyway," she agreed pleasantly.

Galmar poured water into the wash basin, tossed his arming tunic onto a chair, and set to scrubbing the armor sweat from his skin as Ashildr stripped off her lighter leathers. She watched, appreciating the curve and bunch of the thick muscles of his back and arms as he worked. He was not a young man and his blond beard and hair were salted with grey, but he still had a strong figure that caught her attention every time - and he knew it. She could see him grinning to himself a little as he showed off for her benefit.

"Don't take what he said to heart," he continued casting a glance back at her. "To the true Nords of Skyrim, you're a hero. More than a hero. The Imperials will say anything now with the Legion beaten and their power here destroyed."

"I don't feel I've done my job well enough if I'm not cursed at at least once a day," Ashildr cracked back, but she knew the humor was only a cover for darker thoughts.

The dead man's words were just so much wind off the gallows, but they lingered in her mind alongside the image of him hanging, bloody and dead-eyed, from his manacles in the interrogation chamber. Another life snuffed out for Ulfric and Skyrim.

She went to the sideboard and found the bottle of Blackbriar Reserve that she had paid a servant to acquire for her earlier. She - both of them, she suspected - needed something a little stronger to take the edge off of the difficult day.

"My treat tonight," she told Galmar as she brought him a cup containing a few fingers of the strong honey liquor. "We've earned it."

He accepted it and they stood beside the fire for a few moments ruminating over the day.

"Do you think it's an organized cell?" Ashildr asked finally, giving voice at last to the question of the evening.

The formal report to Ulfric would wait until morning, but both she and Galmar had heard the Nord's confession. Galmar frowned thoughtfully..

"Hard to say," he concluded. "They both had Legion tattoos, but that's common enough here and two doesn't make a movement. The names - I have a scribe looking through Dour's records, but I'd stake a good amount of coin on most of them being listed dead or missing in action. We killed or capture most of the active Legion in the city, but not all of them. Tullius was a crafty old snake, I'll give him that. I wouldn't have put it past him to plant a hidden resistance force in the event we took Solitude. His spies were everywhere during the war."

"If it's fifth columnists we're dealing with, then it doesn't seem like Elisif is in on it. The man at court directed as much ire at her as he did me."

The housecarl grunted in acknowledgement.

"Whether it's lone wolves or a conspiracy, we'll root them out. The days when Skyrim Nords could be stopped by Imperial threats and elf tricks are gone. If they can't move with the tide, they'll be crushed by it."

He sipped his drink, inhaled the sharp bite of the fortified mead, and cast a searching glance at Ashildr. He offered his hand and allowed the faint hardness that had come into his face to gentle again.

"Sit with me. It's been too long a day to dwell on the work."

She allowed herself to be guided to the bed, bringing the bottle with her, and settled onto her side across the furs. Galmar took up his usual position against the headboard, still shirtless. She noticed his eyes take her in, lingering over the emphasized feminine curve of hips and waist that her position afforded, and she smirked.

"Changed your mind? No better way to take the edge off a bad day," she teased him, only half seriously.

Even if he recanted his decision, she knew they were both too tired and in no mood to revisit that sack of cats tonight.

"I said I'd wait til your heart was in it, not that I wouldn't enjoy the view in the meantime," he responded, a growl of exaggerated lechery that made her laugh.

They both relaxed gradually, putting the unpleasantness of the evening behind them, and Ashildr looked up at Galmar curiously from where she reclined.

"What's it to be tonight? More questions?" she asked.

He nodded and gestured to her with his cup.

"Lady's choice first this time. Ask."

She surveyed him shrewdly for a moment and then settled on her question.

"You told me that you weren't a man for a soft woman to handle," she began, trying to word her question delicately. "Did you never try to settle down? You're handsome enough. Respectable. You must have had women throwing themselves at you."

Galmar smiled at her assertion that he was handsome, but his gaze turned inward to his memories and the smile diminished. He shook his head.

"No. I could have. I came close once, but it wasn't to be. All my youth was spent at war and afterwards on Ulfric's campaigns. If I'd taken a wife, she would have been left alone most of that time to wonder if she'd ever see me return. It wouldn't have been fair to leave a widow when I never had the time to be a husband." He sipped the strong, fortified mead and grimaced. "I would have tracked the stench of blood and battle into her life. It's the rare woman who can tolerate that for long."

"Which explains us," Ashildr finished, raising an eyebrow wryly. "I already have the whiff of war about me. I have no grounds to complain."

Galmar chuckled at that, but she could see that she had struck an uncomfortable note.

"You've known war, yes. You and I have been forged in the same fire. That's the least of what you are to me."

She was about to retort, but Galmar continued before she could speak, taking the reins of the conversation.

"I don't have to ask whether you've ever tried to settle down with someone," he told her, wittily turning the subject back on her.

Ashildr's lips quirked in recognition of the jibe and she shrugged. She had admitted as much the previous night.

"I am the stone of proverb, rolling downhill since the day I was born. Until I rolled into you, of course."

"Do you regret it?" he asked.

The question was delivered with a jocular warmth, but it was a serious inquiry. She considered for a moment before shifting on her back to look up at the housecarl.

"I thought I did. But, no. This was worth doing. There are worse places I could have come to rest."

She was not about to let him get away unscathed, though, and she smiled meanly.

"If it means I have to stop next to a tough old bear and his bad humor, so be it, I suppose."

When they had finished laughing, she sat up and refilled their cups, settling back to find Galmar studying her keenly.

"You never told me how you came to mercenary work," he ventured at last. "You weren't Legion trained - your fighting style is too mixed. You're too skilled for your age and too sharp at negotiating with Ulfric to have picked it up on your own. Who taught you?"

"Careful," Ashildr warned him,softly.

She glanced up into his face, watching him reading her the same way she was reading him.

"Some things are best left to the imagination. You won't like what you find down that path."

Galmar leaned forward, resting his large forearms on his knees, and did not let his steely gaze drop from her own. He lifted his bearded chin a little as a challenge.

"Try me."

He did not know what he was asking. Or, Ashildr reconsidered, he might and wanted to confirm it. Galmar wasn't a fool and he had trained and commanded thousands of soldiers in his time. He knew that she had lived rough all these years. She had promised him honesty. If he reconsidered all his fine feelings for her after learning who she really was, then it would be best to get it out into the open now before things proceeded further.

She drained her cup to buck up her nerve for the subject, cleared her throat, and then met his eyes again.

"My father was a mercenary. He had no kin to leave me with and so I grew up on the move with his company. I started carrying messages and collecting arrows for the archers when I was five. I was squiring for the heavy soldiers by the time I was eight: scouring armor and sharpening swords, playing cupbearer for the officers while they planned. I killed my first man when I was eleven."

Galmar listened attentively, his expression betraying nothing until she mentioned her first kill. She elaborated before he could ask.

"I was light and fast enough to make a decent scout by then so I would go out sometimes to creep around and report back on ambushes and troop positions. This clod-brained hulk of a bandit without the sense to armor himself properly got the drop on me in the underbrush, but he didn't count on a little girl being quick enough to skid under his guard and ram a blade into his ribs. The commander found it so funny that he paid me a full swordsman's wergild for that day and I was allowed to drink with the rest that night. I kept the dead man's belt dagger. I still have it."

The housecarl grunted, satisfied with the clarification. It was uncommon, but children could occasionally be found as pages and drudges in military camps and it was a narrow, blurry line between that and fighting. He nodded for her to continue.

"You mother?"

"I never knew her," Ashildr answered, feeling the dark discomfort of the memories prickling along her neck and spine as she thought back to the few times that her father had ever spoken of the woman who had given him a daughter. "She was long gone by then, either swanned off with another lover or fed up with my father's temper, depending on who you asked. The cook once told me that my father had picked her up from a brothel in Bruma and I was born a little over a year later. I don't know anything else about her, except that she was a Nord and mentioning her was enough to put my father in a rage when he was drunk. Which was often enough."

She poured again, resisting the urge to scowl into the deep amber contents of her cup before tossing them back again. The alcohol was loosening her tongue dangerously, she knew, but Galmar had asked for this. She hissed the bite of the liquor out between her teeth and pressed onward.

"It wasn't all bad. The company raised me and taught me everything I needed to know. My father's shieldbrother - Olaf - carved me a wooden training sword and taught me how to stand and where to strike. The camp steward and cook - a fat Breton who was so fierce with her iron ladle that even the biggest of the men wouldn't cross her - kept me fed and taught me how to turn dry rations into something worth eating. The fighting women showed me how to braid my hair to keep it from being grabbed in a fight and how to bind my chest to fit comfortably in armor when I was older - and how to put a man in his place if he got too familiar, for that matter. The Dunmer mage taught me to read, write, and figure so that I could help him stock and file his alchemical ingredients. It was a hard life, but by the time my father finally got himself killed I could stand on my own. I'm grateful for that."

She watched Galmar's face intently, waiting to see revulsion or pity form there. She did not want to see either, but she was used to being looked down on. Better that he know what she was - the bastard brat of a swellsword and a whore - so that there were no illusions about what he was getting.

In the end, Galmar took her explanation and raised an eyebrow in thoughtful acknowledgement.

"Explains why I couldn't nail down your sword style at first. You must have been taught from a dozen different techniques. Explains why you fight like a veteran half again your age, too."

"It made me what I am," she agreed, tightly, her tone bordering on a dare. "What I needed to be to become the Dragonborn and help you drive out the Thalmor and the Empire."

"It made you the woman I love," he finished for her, rounding the challenge back at her with crushing, unexpected grace that silenced any reply she could have given.

For a moment that seemed to last an age, they stared at each other. Galmar would not look away. He fixed her with an unfaltering smile, waiting to see how she would take the admission. It was the second time that he had told her he loved her. The first had slipped out during their last fight before she had agreed to try with him and see what came of it. Ashildr tried to scare up a witty response to take the power from the words that she could not yet yield to, but could come up with nothing.

"Poor you," was all she could manage with a hollow smile as she reached for the bottle.

His large hand moved over hers, stopping her.

"No more tonight," he told her gently.

When Ashildr lifted her face back to him to protest, she was halted by the concern she saw there. It was not a command. It was a request. Silently, she released her grip and allowed Galmar to take the bottle. He sat it aside and then leaned back against the headboard. His expression - far from pity or scorn - was laced with no small amount of pain.

"My father was councilor and housecarl to Ulfric's father," he told her somberly. "Stone-fist is an ancient name in Windhelm. Our clan has always been respected. While he carried out his duties for the Jarl and was known as an honorable man in public, in private my father beat and berated his wife - broke her spirit until she became a living ghost of herself. He bullied his servants and his children. When he died, it was a relief, not a sorrow. The difference between us is that the monster who fathered me could hide behind his family name."

He closed his eyes briefly, breathing in deeply and expelling a sigh as he opened them again and looked at her.

"Whatever made you, Ashildr, I would never wish it away."

In that moment, Ashildr very nearly reached out for the man sitting in front of her. She moved, her knees under her, staring at him as she fought the conflicting urges to give comfort and stay back in safety at the same time. A terrible realization cut through the initial shock of the revelation and she felt her stomach twist at the awfulness of it.

"That's why your brother is the way he is?" she asked cannily, keeping her eyes trained on Galmar as she waited to see how he would react. "That's why you protect him?"

He looked away and for a brief instant Ashildr wondered if there wasn't just the hint of tears in the corner of the big man's eyes, but it passed as quickly as it came.

"I was the oldest. I was the stronger one, the smarter one, the one that our father was counting on to uphold the family name and pride. From the moment he was born, Rolff could never measure up. Our father terrorized him, pushed him beyond sense, tried to make him the kind of man that would be a credit to the Stone-fist name. It ruined him."

 _It ruined him_ , Ashildr repeated in her mind, the hairs on her neck rising as she remembered the younger Stone-fist sneering in the face of a young Dunmer woman, ale on his breath and glazed in his reddened eyes. She remembered the thrashing she had given him as a result and how it had almost seemed to endear her to to him afterwards. She remembered him sitting at her table with Galmar in Windhelm and trying to make conversation - trying to get her approval as much as his brother's - and she felt sick.

"Divines," she breathed and this time she did not allow her reticence to hold her back.

She moved, kneeling next to Galmar on the bed as her hands found his shoulders and his bearded cheeks as if she could staunch the pain of the memory like a bloody wound. He had always initiated physical contact with her, but tonight she pulled him into an embrace, burying her face against his neck and shoulder as he enveloped her fiercely. It was a long, long moment before they broke again.

"You deserved better," she asserted as she sat back on her heels, shaking her head against the depth of feeling she had for his pain. "Rolff deserved better. Whatever happens between us, Galmar, no one will treat you that way again. Not in front of me."

"You're going to protect me, then, are you?" he asked, teasing her weakly. His voice was huskier than it had been previously, but deep and relieved.

Ashildr felt him brush loose strands of hair from her face, his rough palm settling on her neck and the pad of his thumb caressing her cheek. She could not have imagined even a few weeks ago that she would ever want that touch or that it would ever provoke a feeling in her other than unease. As she looked at him now, though, seeing the great Stormcloak general vulnerable before her, she was surprised at the strength of her desire to shield him from his demons and humbled at how his presence in her life seemed to form a barrier against her own.

Ashildr returned the smile with a sturdier one.

"Back to back, as we fought the Legion. I could do no less for a husband than I did for a commander."


	2. The State of Things

_**Warning: there is violence and some gore in this chapter**_

* * *

The long awaited Moot was convened the following morning and, by lunchtime, the Jarls had rendered their verdict. Ulfric Stormcloak was, at last, High King in Skyrim by conquest and by right. The only surprise was that decision had taken the council of Jarls even that long to make.

Ashildr, still filling the role of housecarl for Elisif, stood at the former queen's side through the short deliberations and the endless speeches. She watched as the younger woman, pale as milk and with a bearing as rigid as a spear shaft, delivered her vote in favor of Ulfric and then gracefully took her place beside him as befitted his betrothed consort. Elisif's gaze never once turned to Ulfric during the entire affair. She accepted her bridegroom's hand and glided along on his arm to the celebratory meal afterward as if led by a ghost, her beautiful smile as fixed as a marble statue's and her eyes just as stony.

The irregularity of the betrothal was not lost on the court. As she passed in the royal couple's wake alongside Galmar, Ashildr overheard a snide comment about Skyrim's "twice bedded and thrice crowned queen" and turned to see Erikur's face smirking with another courtier. She had met the aging, preening thane on a previous visit to Solitude and knew him to be a weasel of a man - mercenary in his loyalties, but without the honor of ever wielding a sword himself.

A warning glare made the men shuffle uneasily and look elsewhere. After the incident in the garden, no one wanted to raise the Dragonborn's ire and Ashildr was in no mood to suffer further insult to her charge. Elisif was soon to be Ulfric's queen and, at the very least, an insult to Ulfric's wife was an insult to Ulfric. The girl had more than her share of troubles besides without hearing herself mocked by the likes of Erikur.

After the luncheon, Elisif used the prerogative of royal delicacy to remove herself to the privacy of her chamber, leaving Ashildr at a loose end. She could not leave the Palace in case Elisif decided to emerge and so she made her way to the study adjoining Ulfric's chambers to see if there was further news on the security situation. A prickle of intuition in the back of Ashildr's mind told her that more was afoot than a couple of unrelated malcontents, but Galmar was right. There was too much unrest in the city in general to know whether they were chasing phantoms yet.

She found Ulfric and Galmar deep in conversation. The door of the study stood open onto the hallway and the two men were conferenced in the center of the room, their attention focused on a piece of parchment in Ulfric's hand.

"If this is true, then we need to prepare for the worst," Ulfric was saying, his brow knit seriously..

"Already seen to," Galmar agreed. Whatever the news was, Ashildr could see that the housecarl was displeased. "I've doubled the guard. I have eyes on the docks and in the market and an ear in the Winking Skeever. If he's still in the city, we'll find him."

"That sounds ominous," Ashildr commented affably, announcing her presence as she stopped in the doorway.

The men looked up, surprised, and Ashildr closed the door behind her as if demonstrating the process. She smiled.

"The servants in Solitude have bigger ears than the ones in Windhelm," she explained, only half teasing them.

Ulfric's war room had remained almost perpetually open to the hall in the Palace of Kings as his officers came and went at all hours during the height of the war effort. The servants at Windhelm were handpicked and carefully watched. Solitude was a different matter entirely. There were no guarantees here in the heart of Imperial Skyrim that a common housemaid, innocently scrubbing a floor within earshot of Ulfric's planning sessions, might not turn out to be a traitor.

To Ulfric, she continued, "Your lady is sulking in her chamber. In the meantime, I've come to hang upon your very first commands as High King and see what fresh eruptions of Oblivion await us now."

As much as Ulfric had learned to play her emotions, Ashildr had learned a thing or two about the Jarl's temperament as well. She knew that, along with Galmar, she was one of the few people that could approach Ulfric as a peer and a friend rather than a subordinate and that he enjoyed her irreverent counterpoint as an anodyne to the rather stiff and serious Windhelm nobility. Within reason.

The new High King's smile was slight, but she saw his tension ease a fraction. He passed the parchment to her.

"One of Tullius' legates may still be at large in the city. Adventus."

Ashildr made a face upon hearing the name. She remembered the legate from her interviews with General Tullius. The Imperial officer had been ever-present in Dour, second only to Rikke among the General's subordinates. While she had nothing against the man personally, in light of the events of the past two days, it was a disturbing thought to imagine that one of the chief Imperial strategists was still hiding somewhere in Solitude.

"Surely we killed him already. None of the Imperials left that command room in Dour alive."

"So we thought," Galmar grunted his assent. There was an unpleasant cast to his features, no doubt remembering the slaughter after the gates of the castle had been breached. "We recorded the bodies that were taken out of Dour. I had a scribe check. Adventus wasn't among the dead. Either he was overlooked - hard to do in a legate's regalia - or he slipped away alive somehow."

She scanned the brief report. Galmar's agents had gone looking for the men mentioned under torture as being possible accessories to a plot. None of them had been found, but the guard had come close with one. The rented room at the Winking Skeever had been vacated with obvious haste, but a partially burned note in cypher was recovered. The scribe who examined it swore that the handwriting matched that of Legate Adventus from the logs and reports in Castle Dour.

"Do we know what the note contained?" Ashildr asked gravely and Galmar shook his head.

"Not yet. It's not one of the Legion cyphers. We will, though. A city guard also reported seeing a suspicious-looking Imperial lingering around the Skeever at dusk a few nights ago, but all those Imperials look the same in low light and the watch is on edge these days - seeing things in the shadows. It could have been Adventus. It could have been some tradesman meeting his mistress for an evening. It could have been nothing at all."

"If he's alive, I want him found," Ulfric cut in sharply.

The excitement of the day and the long hours that all of them had put in since they had come to Solitude were wearing thin on the new High King, Ashildr thought. He frowned, grinding his jaw in agitation at the thought of one of the top level Legion officers loose in his city.

"I won't allow the Empire a foothold in this country any longer. If Tullius left behind a pack of wolves to dog our steps from the shadows, then we will exterminate wolves."

Something in the cold delivery of the pronouncement sent a chill up Ashildr's spine. She watched Ulfric carefully, trying to discern the shades of his meaning as he took the report back from her and tossed it onto the desk with distaste. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Galmar smile, grimly.

Galmar, perhaps even more than Ulfric, hated the Empire. He loathed it in a way that seemed to transcend the grudges of an old soldier and call to mind the ancient mythic blood feuds of Nord legend - eternal, unyielding, and uncompromising. Perhaps it was justified. She had been born in the years after the White-Gold Concordat ended the Great War, but she had grown up with the stories and seen the Nord warriors in the mercenary company scowl at high elves and covertly touch their Talos amulets beneath their tunics. She had seen the result of the Thalmor's inquisitions on Talos worship with her own eyes in their Embassy. Still, the change in Galmar's voice and the way his eyes hardened when the subject arose had always fallen on Ashildr with a tinge of unease.

"If he's alive, we'll find him," she asserted, echoing Galmar's stance with more confidence than she felt. She exchanged a glance with the housecarl and nodded, curtly. "I didn't fight a war to let some Imperial without the grace to die with his general get us in the end."

"Spoken like a true Nord," Ulfric replied with an appreciative grin, eased by her assurance. He looked between her and Galmar, reaching out to grip each of their shoulders with the rough affection that passed between sworn comrades in arms. "I leave this in your hands, my friends. There is no one I trust with my life and our cause more."

They moved on to other matters - Ulfric's plan to reinstate the altar of Talos in the temple the following day and the imminent wedding to Elisif - but something about the earlier discussion burned in the back of Ashildr's mind.

The image of Ulfric coldly asserting that it was time to eradicate wolves rose up uncomfortably in her thoughts. The wolf was the symbol of Solitude, down to the heraldry blazoned onto the shields of the guardsmen and worked into the stone facade of the buildings. The Legion were often spoken of in Skyrim in terms of a wolf pack working together to bring down larger prey. She told herself that Ulfric's metaphor was about the possible hidden insurgents, but Ashildr wondered.

How far was Ulfric really willing to go to secure his throne?

For that matter, how far was Galmar willing to go for Ulfric?

The subject had been of no consequence when she had first signed up under Ulfric's banner. She had avoided the most cut-throat patrons merely out of good business sense and self-preservation, but Ashildr was used to thinking of such grey areas as beyond the scope of her work. She was paid to fight not to moralize about the rightness or wrongness of her patron's affairs and that philosophy had kept things simple and profitable. Now, when she had been persuaded to believe in something for perhaps the first time in her life, suddenly the method seemed to matter. Especially where Galmar was involved.

The Stormcloak general was principled, honorable, and fair-minded most of the time. He was a practical influence on Ulfric's idealism, translating words into reasonable action. He was careful with the lives of his soldiers and treated them like kinsmen instead of expendable fodder for the sword. Everyone had their darkness, however, and Ashildr knew that the Empire and its defenders were Galmar's.

The possibility of a plot spear-headed by an escaped Legate Adventus was no less troubling. A rabble of a few disaffected Imperials and legionnaires that had escaped capture was one thing. With the direction of a high-ranking officer personally groomed by General Tullius, that messy selvedge cut from the Legion's defeat could metastasize into something dangerous indeed.

How could the legate have survived, though? Dour had been a bloodbath. She had seen Adventus there in the castle when the siege broke at last, rallying his men in a last attempt to bottleneck the Stormcloak invaders at the entrance to the keep. She swore that she had seen him fall under a Stormcloak axe. Even if he had survived, how could he have remained hidden for so long with Stormcloaks on every street in the city?

Something about the facts did not line up and Ashildr was still turning over the details in her mind when she left the study and turned her footsteps towards the kitchens. Palace dinners were always held fashionably late and the feast held in honor of the Moot would be particularly fashionable. A snack of bread, cheese, and ale to tide her over would be just the thing.

As she descended the back stairwell to the landing, however, she nearly ran full into Elisif's lady's maid, who was hurrying up the stairs with a laundry bundle in her arms.

The young woman nearly lost her balance and Ashildr reflexively caught her arms, preventing her from taking a nasty fall back down the stairs. The wash bundle dropped onto the stones and tumbled down a few steps with an audible thud and rattle, surprising Ashildr. She looked from the bundle to the girl, who was just recovering her composure. The maid glanced at the bundle and then narrowed her eyes, stepping out of Ashildr's grasp as if affronted.

Svanna - that was the name Ashildr had heard Elisif use for the girl. She was about Elisif's age, lithe and tall with jet black hair and eyes. She bore a certain resemblance to Erdi, another of the serving girls, but was by far the prettier of the two. Perhaps a sister. Both girls had that peculiar ethnic ambiguity to them that developed in city folk over time as the races intermarried and melded together and it was difficult to tell Svanna's heritage. She could have as easily passed for a Breton or an Imperial as a Nord.

"Sorry," Ashildr apologized and moved to recover the bundle for the maid. As she reached for it, though, the girl snatched it up and folded the awkward sacking to her chest, fixing Ashildr with a haughty glare.

"Do watch where you're going, Dragonborn. These clothes belong to her majesty and it is difficult enough to keep them in good repair without you throwing them about."

It was all Ashildr could do not to laugh at the younger woman's false bravado. She smirked, glancing at the bundle and then skeptically back up at Svanna.

"Our queen has a heavy fashion sense from the sound of it. Perhaps you need help with the burden."

But this was precisely what the maid did not want. Her nose went up in the air and she tried to maneuver around Ashildr while still maintaining her courtly bearing. Ashildr watched, smiling and making no excuse for her continued stare.

"These are hunting leathers, not that it's any of your business," Svanna hissed at last, seeming to realize that she was not talking to a mere guardsman that could be warned off with Elisif's title. "My lady does not owe _you_ an explanation for her garments."

"Of course not," Ashildr agreed amiably. She turned and followed Svanna up the stairs at an unhurried pace. "I am bound to serve - and so I will assure myself that no further incidents befall the queen's clothes on your journey upstairs."

Perhaps, Ashildr thought sardonically, she was getting the hang of this courtly nonsense after all.

Svanna hurried back to Elisif's chamber, casting nasty glances over her shoulder now and then at Ashildr's steady pursuit. The parcel was large enough that the maid was forced to open the door almost fully instead of gracefully slipping through and Ashildr caught a glimpse of Elisif standing in the evening light of the window in the room beyond. The young woman's gaze took in her maid's arrival and then for an instant fixed on Ashildr further out into the hall with an inscrutable, icy expression before the door was firmly closed.

Ashildr turned back towards the main wing of the Palace, clasping her hands thoughtfully behind her as she added one more item to her list of problems to consider.

~~0~~

The spirit of celebration surrounding Ulfric's election to the throne was short lived. The feast was still in progress when Ashildr, deadly bored in her seat at the high table next to a frigid Elisif, noticed a guardsman enter and move swiftly to Galmar. She watched, immediately alert, as the man whispered something to the housecarl, received a response, and clapped his gauntlet to his breastplate before leaving again. Galmar's gaze flicked down the table to her, a grave nod passing between them. He next leaned over to Ulfric, murmured something, and then stood from the table. Ashildr rose and followed him into the corridor, wondering what was so vital that it was worth interrupting Ulfric's feast.

"There's trouble in the market district," Galmar told her swiftly, moving in close so that his low, terse growl would not carry in the stone corridor - a commander speaking to his second instead of a husband to a wife. "One of our wolves, maybe. I can't leave Ulfric with so many people in the hall. Take a detail of Stormcloaks - _not_ the city guard - and see to it."

She pressed her fist to her chest in response and hurried away, jogging through the corridors of the palace and stopping only to find a page to send ahead to Castle Dour so that a patrol of soldiers could be scrambled from their racks and to armor herself.

The days were growing warmer, but the nights were still cool on the northernmost peninsula of Skyrim. Ashildr joined her detail of twelve Stormcloaks in Dour's courtyard, delivered orders for every soldier to keep their eyes peeled and their swords ready, and then advanced on the market.

The moons cast their ethereal presence down on the cobblestones of the city, throwing the looming buildings along the road into black and white relief. Her dragonbone armor almost seemed to glow under the chimerical light. Ashildr's every sense felt stretched, as if she were a mage able to reach out and ahead with her inner sight into the city. Her hobnailed boots echoed off of the stones as a regular ominous cadence in her ears along with her heartbeat.

The broad market road that was the main artery into Solitude was deserted and almost silent at this hour of the night, although the lamps were still lit at the Winking Skeever and the sound of a lute drifted lazily out into the empty street. But the street was not as empty as it first appeared.

There was a public oratory across from the Skeever - a place for the criers to deliver their news and for the condemned to be beheaded. Lanterns cast mazed golden light along the ancient walls and Ashildr could see a gaggle of agitated guardsmen circulating before the stage.

Two guardsmen split off from the others, approaching suspiciously until they recognized Ashildr's armor and the uniform of her men.

"Dragonborn," one of the guards acknowledged, his face obscured by his helm but his thick, guttural accent marking him a Nord. "By Talos, I'm glad it's you they sent."

"What's the situation?" Ashildr replied, assuming command at once.

No information about the nature of the incident had been forthcoming before she left the palace. She watched, trying to read the cues in the man's body language, as the guard hesitated and glanced at his colleague. The note in his voice when he responded was grave.

"You'd best come see for yourself."

The guards had sat lanterns along the rim of the stone platform. As Ashildr approached, she remembered her first moments in Solitude when a crowd had been gathered there on a chilly autumn afternoon. A man named Roggvir had died mere feet away from where she now stood, beheaded for allowing Ulfric to leave the city after his infamous duel with the late High King Torygg. Ashildr had pitied the man and his kin, but she had thought him foolish then - a needless martyr to his honor. Now, she was not quite so certain.

The first hint that something gruesome awaited her was the sharp coppery tang of blood in the air as Ashildr approached the dias. The only recent executions had been carried out within the walls of Castle Dour, so there could only be one explanation. Reflexively, like raising her shield to deflect a blow, she detached. The soft thing so recently discovered curled tightly down into safety beneath the hardened, professional killer.

The two bodies that lay crumpled in the far back corner of the platform wore Stormcloak armor, but the uniform cloak was more reddish-brown now than blue. Ashildr didn't have to look at the gaping, lacerated maws of the throats to tell that more blood was outside the dead soldiers' bodies than in. A well placed torch illuminated streaks of blood on the wall between them, but the pattern was too regular to be natural. With an eerie, hair-raising jolt of horror, she realized that the streaks were letters.

"Death to the Usurper," Ashildr pronounced slowly, the words crackling across her mind with the fury of a lightning bolt.

One of the soldiers behind her gagged, stumbled, and retched, finally overcome by the stench of death.

Two dead dissidents. Two dead Stormcloaks.

Ulfric had been right. They were no longer dealing with lone wolves.

~~0~~

The hour was closer to dawn when Ashildr, exhausted and footsore, finally arrived back at the Blue Palace. Ulfric had already turned in, but Galmar was awake and anxiously awaiting her report. The news was not good.

Two young Stormcloaks - off duty recruits barely old enough to have a scruff of beard between them - had left the Winking Skeever a little after midway through the first watch. They were obviously drunk, according to the guardsmen that had been on duty near the main gate, and had been in the company of a few other Nords. Just after the changing of the guard for the second watch, there had been an attack on the inner gate guards. A man in light Imperial armor, armed with a bow, had stepped out from one of the alleyways and taken a shot at the guards. They had given chase, but had ultimately lost their attacker in the warren of narrow passages and dog-runs that snaked around the shops and houses. The bodies had been placed within minutes between the attack and the arrival of the auxiliary guards.

"Damn it," Galmar fumed, pounding a fist onto the planning table with a fierce scowl.

It was hard enough to lose men in battle. Losing two soldiers - young men, hardly blooded - like this was worse. There would be time for comfort later. For now, they were general and second trying to work through the grim mess before worse happened.

"I had the bodies removed and the wall scrubbed. That's the last thing we need people to see on the heels of the Moot," Ashildr continued, soberly. "I've had the guards involved pulled from their rotation and their accounts taken down. You can read the notes later. This was planned. They knew when the guard changed. They knew how long they had to drop the bodies and get away. This was a message."

"And no sign of the legionnaire? Do we know who those boys left the Skeever with?"

"We swept the area, but the killers were long gone by then," Ashildr explained. She felt her expression tighten as she continued, "I spoke with Corpulus. You know how he is, but this happening on his doorstep is bad for business. He wants no trouble from the Stormcloaks, so I think we can trust the information. There were three men - two Nords and an Imperial. He didn't know two of them, but the third was Heimvar from the smithy. Beirand's apprentice."

The housecarl huffed with disgust.

"Beirand will bend whichever way the wind blows, but I knew that apprentice of his was trouble the first time I saw him. I want him in irons. If he was involved in this, that Imperial-loving milkdrinker's head can hang from the gates next to what's left of Tullius, but not before we get every last piece of information from him. I will have blood for this - tenfold for the deaths of my men."

"We raided the smithy. Heimvar was nowhere to be found."

"Guilty, then," the Stormcloak general growled.

Ashildr considered carefully before speaking again. Stormcloak justice was swift and once the word spread through the barracks, every soldier under Ulfric's banner would be looking to call in the debt for their dead comrades. Galmar wasn't wrong. Blood would have to be spilled for this insult, but better that it was the murderers' instead of innocent blood.

"I had Beirand arrested," she said at last. "He seemed as surprised that Heimvar was gone as we were, but he might know something. Whether he's involved or not, cooling his heels in Dour's dungeon for awhile will make him think carefully about what he has to tell us. Let me question him later. He's got a wife and son in the city. For their sake, I don't think it will be hard to get a confession if he's guilty. You've bigger game to hunt now."

Galmar grunted his assent, his ire cooled by her calm competence. The old soldier straightened and removed his helm, running a hand through damp hair as he closed his eyes. Grief and fatigue lined his face. Ashildr felt something inside of her tug towards the man who was her husband, sympathetically. He cared deeply for his men. He never spent their lives cheaply or without cause. Galmar would wear his vengeance on his sleeve, but this face - the dread that he had somehow failed the two dead soldiers - she knew was for her alone.

"I need to sleep for a few hours," she told the housecarl. She reached for his arm, squeezing with light pressure. "You do, too."

He allowed himself to be led from the room and down the hall to their own chamber. Ashildr found one of the night stewards and told them to wake the Dragonborn and her husband at the end of the third watch. They disarmed and washed, doing the minimum of what was necessary to assure their armor and arms were cared for. As Ashildr rinsed her face in the basin, she rose to feel Galmar's presence behind her, his thick hands sliding onto her shoulders. She allowed him to lean on her, his forehead pressing against her hair, his silent breath warm on her neck.

He had never needed her before now. Not like this. She had been useful to him in the way that a tool was useful. There had been rare moments on the battlefields and in the camps where they had bolstered each others spirits against pain and difficulty. This went far deeper.

"We couldn't have stopped it," she assured him gently. "It won't be for nothing. We'll make sure the debt is repaid."

"I know," he replied, too quietly.

She turned and finally coaxed him to bed. In the dim, soft blue light of early dawn that filtered in through the windows, Ashildr moved beneath the furs and curled into her husband's arms, allowing the grim vision of gore and death to slip from her for awhile and hoping that her presence could do the same for Galmar.

~~0~~

The reinstatement of Talos' shrine proved to be a more popular event than Ashildr had counted on for a largely Imperial-minded city. The chapel was packed with bodies and even more filled the courtyard outside. Even the loyalist Nords of Skyrim, it seemed, could agree that returning Talos to his rightful place of honor was something to be celebrated.

Coming on the heels of the murders, both Ashildr and Galmar were on edge as they followed Ulfric and Elisif through the formal ceremonies. Galmar had wanted to postpone the ritual, but Ulfric would not hear of it. He was not about to show fear in the face of his enemies, especially not at the cost of delaying his oath to Talos. A crowd would be an easy place for an assassin or a terrorist bent on large scale destruction to hide, however, and Ashildr's gaze never ceased to sweep the faces around her, searching for any sign of danger.

The ceremony was completed without issue. The shrine was replaced in its alcove at the very center of the gallery of Divines and, when the homily and speeches were done, the worshipers thronged to pay homage to the God of Mankind. Perhaps the return of Talos was too sacred an event for even the insurrectionists to interfere with.

Ashildr did what was expected of her, offering a prayer for victory and placing a coin beneath the the axe-headed shrine before stepping out of the way for the next worshiper. Religion had never been of much interest to her, but respect for Talos was one of the few things that her father had impressed upon her. The Talos amulet that she wore carefully tucked beneath her armor had been his. After her first kill, concerned that he had allowed his daughter to go into battle unprotected, he had taken the amulet from his own neck and looped it over hers in a rare gesture of paternal affection. For the sake of that memory - for the sake of the rough, familiar face with blue eyes that mirrored her own that she had glimpsed among the warrior souls in Shor's Hall - she always left an offering at any Talos shrine she passed.

As she moved around the gallery, she took in the other shrines. Arkay. Akatosh. Kynareth. She paused in front of the shrine to Mara sitting at the far end of the panorama of gods.

The goddess of motherhood, the hearth, and marriage had never been of much consequence to Ashildr until she had met Erandur. The former Daedric acolyte had lived an unusual life for a priest of Mara, steeped in sacrifice, subterfuge, and dark magic. The Divine, however, had given the Dark Elf better purpose. She could not have asked for a more loyal friend or traveling companion. He had aided her in her fights, healed her wounds, listened and shared his companionship with her, but he never judged her even when he disagreed with her actions. Through him, Mara had gained a grudging foothold in Ashildr's anemic spiritual life as well.

She fished another coin from her belt pouch and rubbed it between her fingers absently. She rarely prayed, but today as she looked at the serene face of the goddess set among the curling knotwork of the stone shrine, two thoughts struck Ashildr.

She was a married woman now, in fact as well as in name. She had crossed that threshold when she had agreed to stay with Galmar and see what came of it. It was strange to think of herself as someone's wife. It was stranger still to realize that the thought no longer chafed at her as unbearably as it once had.

Elisif, too, would soon be a wife again. Ashildr glanced to where the young woman stood with Ulfric, who was deep in discussion with a circle of other dignitaries. They made a fair couple on the surface, both handsome and regal, but poison ran beneath that thin veneer of courtly civility. She and Galmar, at least, had not begun as mortal enemies.

In a week, Elisif would walk into a bedchamber to spend her wedding night with the man who had killed her beloved first husband. The grotesqueness of the imagery sent a primal shudder down Ashildr's spine as she placed the coin down before the greenstone shrine of the Lady of Mercy.

 _Make it work out for them somehow, for her sake if not for Ulfric's,_ she prayed _. She's been through enough._

With their public duties completed, the royal party returned to the Blue Palace, but Ashildr detoured back towards Castle Dour. Ulfric had agreed to release her from trailing behind Elisif for the afternoon so that she could rest after the night's difficulties, but there was one task to complete first.

The dungeons beneath Castle Dour were damp, cramped, and cold. The cells held both the worst of the city's civilian miscreants as well as those Legion personnel deemed too dangerous to be kept with the other prisoners of war. Ashildr waited in the interrogation chamber as the gaoler fished a disheveled Bierand out of one of the cells and brought him, manacled and anxious, to attend upon the Dragonborn.

The smith was a burly Nord just reaching middle age. She was not well acquainted with him, but she had bought a blade from him once and he had repaired her armor a few times after her excursions. She knew him to be even-tempered and competent, at least. His Redguard wife owned a shop in the market district and Ashildr had seen their son playing around the smithy. It seemed unlikely that Bierand would be part of a plot that might endanger his family, but he wouldn't be the first man to make a fatally bad decision.

"I'm not pleased to see you here," Ashildr began, affecting a reproving tone in an attempt to make the frightened smith open up. "I know you forged for the Legion, but I always thought you had sense enough to tend to your business instead of politics."

The man's eyes widened and he leaned towards her, manacles clanking as his craggy hands splayed in nervous petition. His voice shook.

"I swear to you, Dragonborn, I don't know where Heimvar is. He goes to the Skeever after his work is finished every few nights to see his friends. I don't pry. If I had known he was-"

He broke off, flustered, and shook his head.

"Please," he pleaded. "My wife will be out of her mind with worry. I don't know anything. I had nothing to do with it."

Ashildr shrugged, keeping her body language neutral. She had dealt with enough captured soldiers and brigands over the years to know that brute force was not always the best way to get information. Sometimes only a hint of sympathy was needed to make a prisoner latch onto it like a drowning man.

"You know how it looks, though. He's your apprentice. He lives under your roof. The guard is never going to believe that he could have been part of a conspiracy right under your nose without you suspecting something. And with two Stormcloaks murdered, they're out for blood, Bierand. If they don't get anything from you, they'll move on to Sayma and see what she knows."

The indirect threat had the desired effect. There was terror in the smith's face and he stared at her, speechless, and began to very slightly tremble. It was exactly what she needed to see. Ashildr leaned in as if wanting to conceal what she said next from the guards standing beyond the door. She fixed the man with a pained expression and lowered her voice.

"Listen, I believe you. You said it yourself: you're a Jarl's man, you side with the city, and the city is Stormcloak now. We Nords look out for our own. Of course you wouldn't put your boy and your woman in danger by going up against Ulfric. It's not up to me what happens, but if you can give me something - anything, even if it seems like nothing much now - I might be able to call the dogs off of you and get them back on the right trail."

The moments ticked by as Bierand turned this over in his head, clearly struggling with something. Despite the chilly air, he was sweating. At last, he sighed, buried his face in his hands, and then looked back up at Ashildr.

"Two nights ago, I did see Heimvar talking with a stranger near the bowyer's shop. I didn't think anything of it. Sometimes folk will give their orders to him to bring to me if they see him out in the market. This was a lanky Imperial with dark hair and a day's worth of beard. It was dusk, so I couldn't see his face well in the shadows. I did see him pass a packet of papers to Heimvar and then walk away."

Now they were getting somewhere. Another sighting of a mysterious Imperial. Ashildr nodded in acknowledgement, watching the smith carefully to catch any hint that he was lying.

"And did Heimvar ever bring you an order?"

"No," Bierand admitted. "I was already busy with the Stormcoak custom from Dour. I thought it might be something simple he decided to take on himself to help out. I was going to ask him about it, but then . . ."  
The smith trailed off, his shoulders slumping as he put two and two together. His voice hushed to a horrified whisper.

"Divines have mercy . . ."

Ashildr had a feeling that she had heard all that the smith could tell her. She stood and clapped the man on the shoulder reassuringly.

"I'll speak on your behalf. With luck, you'll be back with your family in a day or two. I'll send news to your wife so she won't worry."

Leaving the Castle with a small contingent of Stormcloaks, she returned to the smithy. It had been locked and guarded against anyone who might return there ever since the incident, but everyone knew who the Dragonborn served and Galmar's men allowed them to begin the search. The apprentice's room turned up nothing. It was suspiciously clean, in fact, and there were fewer belongings left scattered around than one might expect in a young man's quarters. Ashildr and her men turned their attention to the rest of the house, but she was almost resigned to the fact that Heimvar had managed to cover all of his tracks until she heard a shout from outside.

The smithy was built into one of the outer curtain walls of Castle Dour along the switch-back ramp that led up to the fortress from the market district. Ashildr exited the interior to see several of her Stormcloaks gathered around the back wall of the broad landing that formed the smithing yard.

"Dragonborn!" one of the soldiers called, motioning her over in excitement.

As she approached the group, she noticed that one of the stones low down on the wall had been removed from the crumbling mortar and was sitting on the cobbles, creating a small dark hole in the surface of the masonry. Clever, as hiding places went. The loose stone was far enough below eye level that it would have been hard to spot by anyone not looking for it.

"Ivar found it when he was searching through the smith's tools," the Stormcloak told her, smacking one of his helmed comrades affectionately on the back. He held out a tightly rolled cylinder of dirty paper to Ashildr. "This was stashed in the back of the hole."

Her mind flashed back to what Bierand had told her about seeing Heimvar accept a packet of papers from an Imperial and her mouth went dry. Hastily, half-afraid that it would turn out to be nothing - just underhanded accounts hidden from the city exchequer or love letters between Bierand and some secret mistress - she undid the leather thong that bound the roll and unfolded it.

There were several thick pages of vellum to the document, but they were unreadable. The text was written in cipher, much like the scrap Galmar's agents had found in the Winking Skeever, and penned in a precise and unintelligible script. Even so, as she flipped through the pages, Ashildr's eyes fell immediately on a dark signature scrawled at the end of the last sheet and her blood ran cold.

 _Adventus._

~~0~~

"So, it's confirmed," Ulfric concluded, poised over his desk in the falling evening light that cast long shadows across the floor of his study.

Galmar had been dismissed to rest earlier after a long, sleepless night and day, so Ashildr stood alone with the High King as she reported in. His expression was grim and there was iron in his tone despite his obvious weariness. Small wonder, Ashildr thought. They were all short on sleep and Ulfric had a thousand other considerations on his shoulders now that he had been confirmed by the Moot. She could tell that the situation was beginning to wear on his normally polished and confident manner.

"We shouldn't be too quick to believe a signature alone," Ashildr replied, conceding, "but it is looking more likely."

The High King's fists clenched briefly, whitening against the dark oak, but then they relaxed. He straightened and sighed.

"This changes nothing. I won't let these murderers and terrorists interfere with my work after we've come this far. The wedding festivities go on as planned. So much the better if I have Adventus' head to display at the feast."

Ashildr smiled wanly as a mental image of a fancy wedding banquet spread out around the centerpiece of Legate Adventus' severed head, festively ornamented with a wreath of flowers, came to mind. Her smile vanished again as she imagined Elisif seated at the high table beyond the gruesome decoration, staring at the head of a man who had once fought for her throne.

"Galmar and I have it in hand. I've already passed the cipher to his agents and I'll brief him when we wakes. Not even a fox can hide when all the hounds are after him. We'll get it sorted, Ulfric. You'll be wedded in a week, back to Windhelm within a fortnight, and this festering city be damned."

Her assurance calmed the new monarch. Ulfric rounded his desk and leaned back against it, facing her directly without a barrier. It had been awhile since they had been able talk privately - not since she had confronted him for answers about her marriage to Galmar. There were many who looked up to Ulfric, but few who had the courage to look him eye to eye. His smile, when he looked into her face, was not the composed public image of the stalwart Jarl turned High King. More was bothering him than just the Adventus situation.

"You're a woman, Dragonborn," he began, feeling out his words.

"Kind of you to notice," she acquiesced wittily because she knew it would make him laugh.

He did, chuckling despite himself.

"I've always noticed," he told her, raising a suggestive eyebrow in acknowledgment of their history together before he moved on. "There are few enough women in my inner circle and few of either sex that I would trust to ask advice of on this subject."

It did not take a seer to tell Ashildr where this was going. A part of her wanted to roll her eyes - the troubles with Elisif were his own doing - but another part of her relented. Ulfric, despite the liberties he had taken with her, was now the closest thing beyond Galmar to family that she had and she couldn't put aside their friendship lightly. She was reminded of Galmar's explanation of what had happened and decided that now was as good as any a time to let the matter rest.

"Elisif?" she asked, confirming the subject, and was answered by the High King's affirmative sigh.

"She's no stranger to marriages of state," he groused, scowling. "She knows that this is the best way to end the conflict between her supporters and mine. I've tried to ease the blow as much as I can, but the girl will not budge a single inch. I may as well have had a wife cut from one of the icebergs on the Ghost Sea."

Ashildr smiled, cocking her head dubiously at him as if to say, _Really? You've no idea why she hates you?_

Ulfric met her gaze and then looked away, chastened as he took her meaning.

"I don't expect a grand romance, Dragonborn. Or that she puts aside her grief over Torygg to welcome me. But, this -" He gestured as if searching for an appropriate word. "This childish silence cannot be tolerated. We have work to do. At the least, we will have to show cooperation to the realm so that the breach between our people can be healed. I'm no cruel brute to force her to do my will, but if she will not even speak to me how can I be otherwise in the end?"

His shook his head, aggrieved. Ashildr studied him for a long moment before replying. The scenario was far too familiar. In the beginning, she had also been silent, aloof, and angry. Galmar had allowed her to be. He had made gestures of kindness, he had never backed down from the odd confrontation, and he had allowed her to come around in her own time. She knew, though, that Ulfric did not have Galmar's patience. Elisif, too, had much greater reason to hate her betrothed than Ashildr had ever had for Galmar.

"It's not too late to send her home," she ventured finally, doubting that Ulfric would listen but hoping that he would at least entertain the idea.

The High King shook his head, his expression twisting sullenly.

"Her family is influential. So close to the wedding, it would insult their honor and I would lose face. I can't leave her as a rival for these insurrectionists to rally around, either."

"Well, you could always drop her in the sea, then," Ashildr responded and then smirked when Ulfric glanced sharply up at her. She relented. "Hell, Ulfric, I don't know. I hardly know what to do with my own ball and chain."

"I had my suspicions that there might be trouble," he admitted sympathetically, perhaps grateful to change the subject to someone else's problems. "I had thought that, once you settled down, you might feel differently. You and Galmar have always worked well well together. Are you unhappy?"

Ashildr considered the question. She had been unhappy in the beginning, desperately so, but things had changed. She liked Galmar. She no longer wanted to escape from him even if she was not yet convinced that she could be what he needed her to be or that she could overcome her own demons enough to, finally, accept what he could give her. Did that mean she was happy?

"No," she replied truthfully and shrugged uncomfortably. "I've always respected Galmar. We do well enough and he's been considerate and patient. I'm trying - he deserves that. I don't know what will happen, but I've no grounds to be unhappy with him."

Ulfric's smile was pained as he listened and he looked down for a moment before turning his gaze wistfully back up at her.

"I've rarely envied my friend, but I do envy Galmar this. In another life, Dragonborn-"

"-you'd have an uncouth battleax of a queen to keep your court in an uproar," Ashildr finished for him and returned his weak smile.

She had already moved beyond her infatuation with the Jarl of Windhelm in the wake of everything that had happened between her, Galmar, and Ulfric. A part of her, though, found it bittersweet to see that perhaps his feelings for her had not been entirely wrapped up in politics after all. She shrugged.

"It's for the best, Ulfric. I was never meant for that. If you can get Elisif to come around, you'll have the queen you need. She may never forgive you for Torygg or the war, but she's no fool. She's just frightened, angry, grief-stricken, and young. You would be, too, in her position. Let her come to the table when she's ready."

They finished the conversation with some brief niceties and then Ashildr made her way back to her chamber, feeling the weight of the past few days, the conversation with Ulfric, and her lack of sleep settling heavily on her shoulders.

Galmar was asleep when she entered, sprawled on his back among the furs. She could hear his deep, steady breathing from the door. He had been awake for the better part of two days and she didn't want to disturb him. Ashildr closed the door carefully behind her and undressed as quietly as possible. When at last she slid under the covers, she paused, propped up on her elbow, to study her bedfellow.

 _Am I unhappy?_ she thought again, echoing Ulfric's question.

Galmar's face was peaceful, his brow smooth and unwrinkled with the stress of their waking life. The moonlight highlighted the gathered knot of his beard and the crooked prow of his nose - broken countless times, no doubt, just like her own. His muscular frame was still except for the gentle rise and fall of his chest. One arm was flung up over his head, crooked against the headboard like a fitful child and it brought a smile unbidden to Ashildr's lips.

If she was unhappy, it was not because of Galmar. She was concerned about the difficulties in the city. She was jarred by the killings, despite her years of battle. She was frustrated with herself, unable to reconcile the hard, killing thing in her with the soft creature that ached at the violence of her life and purred whenever she was in Galmar's arms. She was worried about Ulfric and what his ambition might drive him to do, and now she worried for Elisif and what _her_ frustrated rage might drive her to do.

And she was tired. So very, very tired.

Gently, so as not to wake the sleeping man, she leaned her head on Galmar's chest and closed her eyes. His skin and the textured hatchwork of grey-blond hair were warm against her cheek. His heartbeat sounded a steady, regular throb in her ear and she felt her weary brain begin to unwind beneath the slow cadence.

She did not know why she needed this tonight, but she did. She did not know why Galmar brought this out in her or why the feel of him there real and solid beneath her drove the darkness out of her head for awhile, but it did. She remembered the hurt in the smith's eyes when he had been afraid for his wife and was surprised to find the echo of that hurt reflected back within her because there was now someone who she, too, feared for in the same way.

Ashildr felt a subtle rouse in the housecarl's breath. Before she could startle and withdraw, his arm moved to surround her. His heavy hand traced a swath of her skin up to where her hair pooled over his side and chest and his fingers twined sleepily into the pale locks, resting on her temple.

"Alright, love?" he murmured, only half-awake.

The pet-name, uttered without thought or guile, hit Ashildr like a warhammer blow that neither her shield nor her armor could protect her from. She wrapped her arm around him and closed her eyes more tightly, cutting off the threat of tears.

She was not alright. But there would be time for that when it would not disturb the sleep that they both needed. She waited as she felt Galmar's steady breathing smooth and settle again and then rode that rhythmic sound out of the world of blood, intrigue, and strife and into the silent darkness.


	3. A Question of Honor

_There were originally three chapters in this story, but I decided during editing that they would be better served by breaking up the final one into two parts and embellishing (perfectionism strikes again). So, one more after this one._

 _***WARNING: There is graphic violence in this chapter ***_

* * *

Ashildr leaned on the balustrade overlooking the palace entrance hall and watched the courtiers, servants, and petitioners come and go. With the royal wedding only days away, the palace was a hive of activity. Gifts were arriving in droves, each of which had to be carefully checked for hazards and meticulously recorded so that appropriate thanks could be given. A constant stream of decorations, flowers, food, and other goods flooded in on the backs of porters. Courtiers gathered and gossiped in their cliques, anticipating the spectacle being prepared for them as it took form.

Her own wedding had been a comparatively simple affair and better so. How Elisif and her women put up with the fuss was beyond Ashildr, but they seemed to actually enjoy it. The court ladies did, anyway, if not actually Elisif herself. The Ice Queen was growing colder and more distant with each day that passed.

"Don't look so miserable," Galmar growled humorously as he moved up to lean on the stone railing beside her. "It'll be over in a few days."

She feigned an irritable snort. "You're not the one who has to follow the hens around and listen to the incessant clucking."

After a long, much-needed sleep, she and the housecarl both were in better spirits. Ashildr glanced at him to see him smiling at the joke, his beard freshly groomed and gathered at his chin and his grey eyes glinting at her with good humor. Galmar's smiles had been rare when she had first met him. They were still rare except, she realized, when they were together. She could not help but respond in kind.

"Best to have a hawk around to keep the hens in line," he teased her, but then shrugged. "I've already suggested a replacement to Ulfric. You'll be free again after the wedding."

Out of the corner of her eye, Ashildr saw Elisif and her lady's maid emerge from the corridor and move towards the staircase. Elisif was dressed in simpler attire today, still in dark blues with an edging of fur. Svanna's dress was a less ornate echo of her mistress'. The royal women were to make an excursion to the Temple that morning to pay homage to the Divines and to see how the preparations for the wedding were going. Ashildr would, of course, be required to escort them. She was preparing to make her excuses and join them below when she caught Svanna's eye. The maid shot her a haughty, sharp glare before turning her nose up and glancing stiffly away.

A thought occurred to Ashildr, one that had been pushed to the periphery of her mind after the murders. She hadn't believed the maid's story about hunting leathers for an instant on that day when they had bumped into each other on the stairs. What had really been in that package? She turned back at Galmar and inclined her head towards Svanna.

"What do you know about Elisif's lady in waiting?"

Galmar craned his head to see who she was gesturing to and then grunted dismissively.

"Oh, that one. She was questioned with the others when we first arrived, but that one's too simple to be trouble. All primp and prattle and no substance. Saw her wandering around with a smear of soot from the hearth on her face the other day before one of the serving women wiped it off for her. If Elisif hadn't taken a shine to her, she'd still be scrubbing floors with her sister."

"Hmm." Ashildr's lips twisted skeptically as she watched the two women descend the stairs, not entirely convinced. At last she sighed, straightening. "I'd better catch up to them. Can't keep the ice wraith in queen's clothing waiting."

She touched Galmar's shoulder briefly as she passed, feeling a tingle of anticipation as he brushed her fingers with his own.

That morning, she had woken in his arms with her forehead pressed against his broad chest and his chin resting comfortably on the crown of her head. Rather than break apart to begin their day as usual, upon feeling her rouse he had shifted a little to prolong and deepen the embrace - something that Ashildr, surprising even herself, had found that she did not mind at all.

"Morning," he had murmured as he kissed her brow fondly.

Then, sensing her warm reception and taking it as further invitation, he had moved amorously on to her lips.

A week had passed since the night in the tent and the memory of that hot need had flooded back on Ashildr far too easily. What had begun simply and gently quickly gained intensity. She had found herself kissing him back ardently, her fingers pressing into the solid muscle of his back as his hands roamed her. Galmar's rigid response had been apparent, pressing hard against her belly beneath the thin layers of fabric between them and she had fought the urge to wrap her long legs around him and accept the obvious overture.

Just as she was ready to throw caution to the wind and slip from her linen tunic to mount him there among the furs, however, he had slowed and pulled a little away with a flushed face and eyes raking her like a hungry sabrecat. Remembering the throaty, lustful rumble in his voice made her heat again.

"The things you do to me, woman."

"That's the least of what I can do to you," she had growled back, full of a boiling urgency, but was interrupted as she moved to recommence.

He had moved further away, rising from her arms and the bed with a smug, self-satisfied grin.

"Later, when we're not expected anywhere." He had winked lasciviously at her disappointment. "Anything worth doing is worth taking the time to do well."

Ashildr had rolled her eyes at the innuendo and flopped onto her back with an exasperated groan, but she had found herself blushing like some callow maiden and enjoying the anticipatory agony of the tease all the same. When was the last time that she had actually _blushed_?

She thought back to that moment as she strode quickly down to join the chilly company of courtiers in the foyer and smiled to herself despite their haughty glances. The sky outside the palace was clear and blue. There was a brisk sea breeze that ruffled the women's hair and whistled between the buildings as they set out from the gates. Today, Ashildr decided, she would not let the boring inanity of her task sap her mood. There was something altogether more interesting awaiting her that evening.

 _When your heart is in it, we'll go again_ , Galmar had told her on their first night in Solitude.

 _Close_ , she admitted to herself. Close enough to know that what he stirred in her was as different from the odd drunken rutt or bawdy tavern seduction of her previous experience as fire was from ice.

He loved her. She didn't know if what she was beginning to feel for him was also love. It seemed a dangerous, ravenous thing, capable of cutting her to ribbons and leaving her bleeding as surely as it could also caress her. Paradoxically, it felt like safety and warmth at the same time. For the first time in her life, it felt like somewhere that she could stay.

Perhaps it was time to find out.

~~0~~

Workers were already decorating the Temple of the Divines ahead of the wedding, stringing garlands of flowers around columns and draping them from rafters. Ashildr waited to one side, observing their progress, while Elisif discussed the particulars of the ceremony with the priests.

The bride seemed to be in a pensive mood, barely speaking more than a handful of words to her companions on the walk from the palace to the temple, and so Ashildr had done her best to remain unobtrusive. Elisif was unusually tense and distracted. More than once, the priest had to repeat a question as her attention wandered. Wedding jitters, Ashildr thought dismissively, and who could blame her? The days before her wedding to Galmar had been equally nerve-wracking and she had not had half as much riding on it as the new queen consort.

Instead of dwelling on the unpleasant subject, Ashildr busied herself mapping out the hall and considering the best placement for guard posts. There was precious little space in the chapel even for the guests, but security could not be compromised. Galmar already had his hands full up at the palace. She could spare him the trouble of coming down to the Temple personally by doing the groundwork as she waited on Elisif's entourage.

She was still musing over the specific placement of the honor guard and the possibility of seeding a few unarmored Stormcloaks covertly among the crowd of guests when finally Elisif was ready to depart. They emerged back out into the bright sunlit courtyard and, immediately, Ashildr felt the familiar, sickening prickle in the back of her brain and in her gut - a soldier's instinct built up over a lifetime of guarding against ambushes - that something was not quite right.

There had been workers in the courtyard when they had arrived, setting up benches and tables for the reception. Now, there was no one. Not even a single guard patrolled the walltops. The stone-paved enclosure was eerily, dangerously quiet.

"Hold-," Ashildr began, frowning suspiciously with her hand on her sword hilt as she pressed up to the front of the group of women. A movement in the upper corner of her vision stopped her in mid thought.

The Temple of the Divines was just as much a working part of the city's fortified castle as the Keep. There were murder holes, loopholes, and embrasures aplenty set into its sturdy design. Ashildr's gaze snapped up to one of the archer's nests nestled in the northern corner of the Temple facade and she felt her spine freeze. A lone archer rose slowly from the cover of the thick stone merlons not forty feet above the women, his longbow already drawn. The arrow was trained on Elisif, who had not moved from where she stood completely still and exposed before the Temple porch.

"Inside!" Ashildr roared at the others as she launched herself forward to drag Elisif back under cover, shielding the younger woman with her own body as the deadly hiss of the arrow's release sounded overhead.

Pain exploded through the back of her right shoulder as the barbed arrowhead, fired at such close quarters, ripped through the layers of leather and thick arming cloth between the plates of her light armor. The lightning strike rush of battle pushed it from her consciousness as Ashildr shoved her charge back through into the safety of the chapel, heaved the door closed, and flattened her shoulder to the northern wall as cover against the archer.

She found herself facing more than just a single opponent when she turned.

Three armored men had moved in from the blind corners of the recessed Temple porch to block any exit. Their armor was a mix of unmatched pieces, rough iron plates bound with leather, the kind of armor worn by brigands and common highwaymen. But these were not brigands. They moved together in a practiced, disciplined formation. Their faces were mostly obscured by their helms, but Ashildr could tell from the way that they gripped their weapons and from the hardness in the glinting eyes that peered back at her that they were there for one singular, grim purpose.

Blood was beginning to soak through the padding of her arming shirt Her shoulder burned from the arrow still protruding from it as if a hot iron had been applied there, weakening her shield arm. All the same, with her mind racing through her options, she cursed the complacency that had led her to leave her shield and helm behind at the palace.

The Temple doors opened outward and could not be barred. There was no easy way to call for aid and help would arrive too late regardless. If Ashildr fell, the women inside the chapel would have no defense against their assassins.

She would not fall.

The red mist of battle-rage - the surging berserker fury that was another inheritance from her father, kindled by the pain of her injury - had already begun to creep up along her vision and Ashildr embraced it. She gathered it, concentrating and refining the seething outrage within her chest like molten iron in a smelter, and forced its energy up and out of her throat in a thunderous Shout.

 **"Fus Ro Dah!"**

The three armored hulks were bowled over like ninepins, flying back a dozen feet and smashing one of the wooden benches into kindling. Ashildr rushed forward in the wake of the Thu'um and was on her foes in an instant, ignoring the arrow shot that whizzed past her cheek as she drove a killing blow down with her sword into the vulnerable throat of the first of three.

She snatched up the dead man's shield and whirled on the second as he was righting himself. The arrowhead embedded in her flesh ripped deeper into the muscle as she bashed the shield into her enemy, knocking him back off balance, but Ashildr was beyond feeling it. That part of her mind was elsewhere, subsumed beneath a fog of the enraged instinct to kill those who would attempt to kill her.

The second of three fell clutching a long slash in his unprotected abdomen as another arrow slammed into Ashildr's thigh and nearly took her leg out from under her. The last of the men on the ground, now upright again, took the opportunity to rush her as she struggled to keep her footing. Ashildr twisted as best she could to avoid the reaving blow of his ax, but was tumbled painfully down by the inertia of armored bodies colliding.

With a murderous roar, Ashildr clamped herself around her enemy like a steel vice and dragged him to the ground with her. She heard the snap of the wooden arrow shaft behind her as it splintered on the stones and drove the barbed head deeper, carving a jagged path of white-hot agony through her body. Her sword had been torn from her grip, but she barely noticed. She used the armored hulk's weight and momentum to roll him, making him a shield against further arrow shot from above as she strained to draw the dagger strapped to her calf from its sheath.

Her enemy was strong, prying at her limbs and snarling a stream of curses as he drug her inch by inch along the ground, trying to get enough purchase to reach his own weapon, which had come to rest a few feet away from their grappling bodies. Ironically, it was his heavier armor with its limited range of motion that doomed him. Ashildr's dagger, finally in hand, bit deep between the plates of his helm and iron gorget once and then once against for good measure. A wash of bright arterial blood covered her arms as the dead man attempted one last futile burst of strength, straining against her grip before emitting an anguished gurgle and shuddering into lifeless silence.

Stormcloaks and city guardsmen were flooding into the courtyard. Evidently her Thu'um had been loud enough to summon aid after all. Hands rushed to help Ashildr disentangle herself from her dead foe and lift her to her feet and she could hear shouts as the archer was dealt with nearby.

Blood matted her hair and stained her face. Every inch of her leather and plate armor seemed coated in its coppery stench. Standing was agony. There was a whiteness closing in around her, a light-headed ringing in her ears and pounding in her temples that coincided with a growing weakness in her limbs. She clung furiously to the shoulder of the soldier who was helping her just to stay on her feet.

Ashildr had seen enough battle injuries to recognize the dire symptoms. She was bleeding out. Her injuries could not wait for a healer.

"Potion. Back pouch on my belt," Ashildr told the Stormcloak through gritted teeth.

The woman complied quickly, locating and pressing the vial of slightly viscous red liquid into her hand. Ashildr downed it in one gulp while thanking the Divines that she had shelled out the gold to procure the apothecary's finest before leaving Windhelm. Within seconds, the flow of blood leaking from her wounds stopped and the pulsing fog was gone from her vision. Her shoulder and leg still hurt fiercely and she was weak from the blood loss. She was not looking forward to having the broken arrows cut from her flesh by a healer later. But, she was alive. Shor would not welcome her to his halls today.

Elisif, too, was alive. As she tested her injured leg's ability to hold her weight, Ashildr glanced up up to see the former queen and her women emerging from the Temple. Most of the ladies were weeping with relief, but Elisif stood and stared at the dead men on the paving stones and the spreading dark bloodstains with a glazed expression.

 _Shock,_ Ashildr thought, but then she remembered Elisif's distracted behavior that morning and how the girl had stood perfectly still and obviously exposed on the Temple porch with an archer poised above her.

Something about this attack - this attempted assassination - was not right. Something about Elisif's laconic response to the danger was unsettling.

It would have to wait until they were back at the Blue Palace. Security came first. Assuming command, Ashildr dispatched a runner to alert Galmar and Ulfric. She assembled a protective escort from the Stormcloak soldiers and guards that had responded to the attack. Finally, she took her place directly alongside Elisif as the heavily guarded party hurried along the high road back to the Blue Palace, doing her best not to limp with every painful step and display weakness to the crowd of shocked onlookers.

Elisif had said nothing since exiting the Temple, walking silently and blank-faced between the mansions of the Palace District. Ashildr glanced at her, watching her carefully while turning over the events of the fight like a gristmill in her mind.

How four armed enemies could have found their way through Dour's gates and into the Temple yard was troublesome. Time would tell who the assassins were and whether there were traitors in the Stormcloak ranks that had aided them. More to the point, though, why had they taken on such an enormous risk by sending four assassins to kill Elisif when one would have been less trouble and more than enough?

The scene played over and over in Gallica's thoughts. The archer perched above them, rising like some Daedric fiend from his cover among the stones - Elisif stopping just at the place where she would be most exposed and standing there stone still - the three ground combatants moving in from the corners to block off any escape. The archer alone would have been sufficient to the task. Elisif was unarmored and untrained in the ways of combat. The archer could have fired from cover as soon as Elisif emerged from the Temple and put an arrow through the former queen's heart twice over before anyone recognized the threat. The heavy soldiers were entirely unnecessary, unless . . .

Unless Elisif was not their target, Ashildr realized as a wave of alarmed nausea swept over her. The pieces of the plot fell into place.

The assassins had come for a Dragonborn, not a queen.

~~0~~

By the time the women arrived at the Blue Palace, the alarm had been raised all throughout the city. A full warband of Stormcloaks formed a protective phalanx before the palace gates and they split only to allow Ashildr and her charges through into the courtyard before closing ranks again.

Galmar and Ulfric were already waiting in the yard. Their faces were pale and full of both anxious fear and righteous anger as they strode quickly forward to intercept Ashildr and Elisif as the gates closed behind them.

With no regard whatsoever for position or who might see it, Galmar immediately engulfed Ashildr in a crushing, furious embrace. The housecarl's body was trembling very slightly as he gripped her tightly enough to make her injuries sting and ache all the more, but it was a comforting pain at the same time and Ashildr returned it gladly. She leaned into the bear-fur mantle at his shoulders, her arms clasped around his neck as she melted into the relief of her survival at last.

"Ysmir's beard, when they told me you were injured I feared the worst."

His voice was thick with emotion and, when he pulled away finally, his eyes searched over her and his large hands moved to her cheeks, tilting her face up to his, assuring himself that she was not injured worse than she initially appeared. Streaks of blood had pressed off onto his skin and armor from where he had crushed her against him so tightly.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm a couple of arrowheads heavier, but I'll live to fight another day," she assured him, touched at the heartfelt depth of his concern.

In the corner of her vision, she saw Ulfric speaking to Elisif. There was a sword's length between the two as Ulfric spoke to his betrothed gently and in low tones. Elisif stood straight and poised, answering Ulfric's inquiries with her gaze turned calmly and distantly aside. The sight of it spurred Ashildr's memory and she turned back to Galmar.

"Bastards," he was fuming, his expression twisting into an vengeful scowl as he noted the broken arrow shaft still protruding from her thigh. "When I find out who's responsible for his, I swear by Talos-"

"Galmar, we need to-" she began urgently, but was interrupted by Ulfric as he left Elisif to the care of her women and turned to his chief commanders.

"I always knew these Imperial sympathizers were cowards and traitors," Ulfric spat with a disgusted curl of his lip, "but I never believed that they would stoop to attacking a group of women in a house of the Divines. To think Elisif's people would turn on her so viciously."

He turned to Ashildr with a pained, grateful expression.

"You saved her life. We both owe you a debt."

"I don't think the assassins were there for Elisif." Ashildr lowered her voice as she glanced past him to see the former High Queen disappearing through the palace doors. "If they had wanted to kill her, that archer could have done the deed on his own. She's been worked up all morning. It's almost as if she knew-"

Ashildr broke off quizzically as she saw the men exchange an uneasy glance between them. There was an awkward pause before Ulfric laid a hand gently on her uninjured shoulder.

"You're wounded, Dragonborn. You need a healer. There will be time to talk of this later."

She shook his hand off, affronted by the implication that she was still addled and weak from the fight. Ashildr looked him dead in the eyes to underscore the seriousness of her assertion as she tried again.

"Ulfric, the archer made certain that I would see him. He didn't fire on us until I was already in front of her. No one needs three big bastards in armor to kill a girl like Elisif, why would they take the risk? There's some strange about this. I don't know that she's involved, but you could be in danger. We need to-"

Before she could continue, Ashildr felt Galmar's hand move to onto her elbow. A soft warning, but a warning nonetheless. There were too many people around. The accusation she was laying against Elisif was a heavy one. One that Ulfric would not want to hear when the public face of it was that there had just been an attack on his future queen. She fell silent, waiting.

The High King nodded as if considering her assertions, but she could feel his skepticism.

"We'll take it under consideration, Dragonborn."

He raised his voice a little, his tone changing, as he seemed to address the entire courtyard.

"You've shed blood for me and mine today. You've proven yourself as true a kinswoman as if you had been born to the Stormcloak name. Let me, then, as your kinsman - as your High King - take vengeance for your wounds and this outrage to our clan."

Regally, he summoned forward one of the Stormcloak officers that stood nearby and delivered his orders.

"Four men - Imperial conspirators - threatened the lives of the royal household this day. Those four men are dead at the hands of the Dragonborn, but the blood debt remains unsatisfied. Take four of the Legion captives imprisoned in Dour. Execute them in the public square and hang their bodies with those of the dead assassins above the gates of the city. Let any who would dare follow in their footsteps see that the Nords of Skyrim avenge their own in full and take warning."

Ashildr's heart dropped into her stomach. How would executing innocent men - prisoners of war who could have had no tie to the attack that day - do anything but make the situation worse?

Before she could step forward to protest, however, Galmar's grip on her upper arm tightened. She looked up at him, alarmed and confused, and saw him shake his head very slightly without looking at her. His expression was stoic, hard, and unreadable. It took her a long moment to understood what he was trying to tell her.

Galmar, first and foremost, was Ulfric's housecarl. His influence was considerable and Ulfric often took his counsel, but even he could not interfere with a direct command in open court. Neither, he was trying to tell her, could she without making it a contest between the High King and the Dragonborn and undermining Ulfric's authority. If she persisted, then Galmar would have to intervene to stop _her_ rather than his king and he did not want it to come to that.

Horrified, Ashildr watched in silence as Ulfric turned back to her. His stern, commanding expression softened again into the sympathetic smile and he made a mild gesture towards the palace.

"Go and rest. I'll send my personal healer to look after your wounds. We'll talk more when you've had time to recover."

Dazed, Ashildr allowed Galmar to walk her to the doors of the palace. He murmured something low and comforting to her, but she didn't hear it. She was too shocked at what had taken place, Ulfric's bloody display of power and how she had been dismissed so easily, to focus on the words. Once inside the shaded foyer, the housecarl's hand lingered on her arm, squeezing apologetically as if he were trying to reassure her. Ashildr was not certain, though, that it was actually her that Galmar was trying to reassure.

She stepped away from him without even looking up into his face and found her way slowly up to their chamber, gritting her teeth against every torturous stair step and trying to make sense of the tangled mess that the day had become when it had begun so promisingly.

~~0~~

The sun had just finished setting over the Sea of Ghosts when Ashildr heard Galmar enter the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

Stripped to her waist, clothed only in breast-band and breeches, she stared out the window at the western horizon and watched the fire drain out of the sky as the stars peeked out from beneath their cloaks and cast icicles of pale light down at the black sea. Far below, the lanterns of night fisherman bobbed on the waves out beyond the crashing surf, as if there were no separation between starry sky and deep ocean.

It was beautiful. Skyrim was beautiful, but it was an austere, difficult sort of beauty for all that. The same sea that captivated her and spread its glamor like a balm across her weary mind would shatter her bones against the rocks and drag her down to a frozen death if she were ever foolish enough to dive into its embrace. Sometimes it was hard for Ashildr not to feel like this danger was a feature of the country itself that extended far beyond the mere landscape.

Warm hands slipped onto her bare shoulders and Ashildr closed her eyes, feeling Galmar's thumbs as they began to knead gentle circles along the aching muscles of her upper back. She was torn, ambivalent between her desire to be alone after the painful and frustrating day and the clawing need for the comfort of his touch and his presence.

How could she have become dependent on that feeling so quickly? How could she let him in so deeply that he seemed to infect every part of her life now? Those were questions that she had already begun to ask herself days before now, but the events in the palace courtyard had thrown them into sharp relief.

His pressed across a tender spot too close to the fresh arrow scar on her shoulder and she flinched, wincing.

It had been a nasty wound. In the end, the healer had to dose her with herbs and brandy, strap her limbs down, and give her a padded bit of wood to bite on as he enlarged the deep puncture enough to reach the steel point where it had stuck fast beneath her ribs. The agonizing minutes that passed during the procedure until the blessed relief of the healing spell was applied were some of the longest of Ashildr's life and she was bitterly sorry not to have passed out from the pain.

Galmar stopped, realizing that he had hurt her. They stood in silence until at last she heard the rumble of his voice, low and concerned.

"Talk to me, Ashildr."

She shifted, unsure even of how to begin but knowing that it would do no good to remain silent. Not with Galmar. Ashildr stared out the window, collecting her thoughts, before she spoke.

"My life was never easy, but it used to be simple. All I had to do was kill whoever needed killing and manage to stay alive to collect my pay. I didn't have to care about the details. It was too bad for the stupid sods that ended up dead, but they knew what they signed on for. If I didn't like a job or a patron, I could tell them to fuck off and that was that."

She paused, drawing in a breath as she felt Galmar's loose grasp on her shoulders squeeze a little to show that he was listening.

"My life isn't simple anymore."

"Maybe you have more to show for it now."

He moved to wrap his arms around her and pull her back against his chest, a gesture of comfort, but Ashildr stepped out of the embrace. She turned slightly but did not look at him. She could feel the sharpness of his confusion and his hurt at the rejection, but he waited to hear what she had to say.

"Do you remember when we stormed the keep at Dour?"

"How could I forget?"

He blew out a deep sigh, no doubt remembering the difficulty of that battle - one of the most costly in lives of the war - but his voice betrayed his uneasiness. She continued.

"When we finally broke through and cornered Tullius, I was actually relieved to see him surrender. It was a shame about that second of his - Rikke - but she left us no choice. At least Tullius had the sense to know when he was beaten. I thought it was over. Then, there with Tullius on his knees right in front of us, Ulfric turned to me and asked if I wanted the honor of killing the Emperor's general. I might be sellsword trash, but I had never killed an enemy that was down and yielded before I came to Skyrim. Not if there was another way. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on Tullius' face before I ran him through. He sensed it. It was his revenge."

She looked up at Galmar then at last, her eyes meeting his as she saw his expression harden instinctively at the mention of the dead Legion general.

"Honor's never been my problem, Galmar. I've killed for less than what happened today, but how many beaten men am I going to watch die on their knees before it's enough?"

Silence enveloped the chamber like the suffocating cascade of an avalanche, sweeping everything before and beneath it. The only sound as they stared at each other was the pop and hiss of pine knots in the fireplace.

Galmar's jaw worked tensely. He looked away into the flames in the hearth, but Ashildr could see his fists tighten. She had not expected him to be pleased, but her words seem to strike harder than she had intended.

She had seldom offered an opinion on Ulfric's decisions. Only once before in anything other than jest and that had concerned their marriage. The whims of power had never seemed to matter much until now when she was neck deep in them. This was the first time that Galmar had ever heard her question Ulfric or his decisions as a leader and Ashildr stood silent, watching the conflicting emotions play out in the older warrior's face.

Ulfric was his oldest friend. They had shed blood together. They had suffered through the Great War and the hard, lean years afterwards. Galmar had risked his life almost daily in Ulfric's service for decades even before the civil war, so devoted was he to the cause. He would never have allowed anyone to even breathe an ill word of Ulfric in his presence, much less challenge their orders. It was only Galmar's love for her, she knew, that made him hold his tongue now and so Ashildr waited to see what he would do.

"Not tonight," he resolved at last, the words seemingly forced out against a strong tide of others left unsaid.

He reached a hand out to her: a peace offering to save them both from the danger that they were sliding towards. He wanted nothing more than for her to take it and let the tension between them slip back below the surface. Ashildr knew that if she did, then her question would be forgotten as a momentary lapse on a night when she was battle-sore, shaken, and weary. There was a part of her that urged her to do it. It would be so easy to avoid the fight and follow Galmar to bed, allow him to wrap her in furs and the comfort of his arms in the hearth light, and forget what had happened that day.

She had always been good at forgetting. As long as she could anesthetize herself with mead and other debauchery and pretend that nothing bothered her so long as the pay was good. Like her father, she thought, with a chill.

She didn't want to pretend anymore. She didn't want the heady feeling that Galmar had shaken awake in her to become only one more numbing vice among many.

Galmar's expression fell by degrees and darkened as he realized that she was not going to accept the offered truce.

"Maybe you'd prefer Imperial justice?" he pronounced icily, the white of his teeth visible beneath his lips as his temper mounted. "Tullius' justice that would have seen you executed for nothing more than being on the wrong stretch of road at the wrong time."

"I thought the point was that we were going to be better than the Imperials."

If she had been anyone other than his wife, Ashildr knew by the way that Galmar's body clenched reactively that he would have struck her for that.

The livid fury welled up in his face like a thunderhead, but he caught himself. Sucking in breath, he turned and circled back a few paces to put further distance between them for safety's sake. Ashildr remained still, remembering another night and another argument when she, too, had been forced to jerk herself back from the brink of violence.

When he could finally look at her again, when he had swallowed down enough of his rage to speak, it was no longer Galmar her husband that she was dealing with. This was Ulfric's housecarl and oldest supporter - the dour Stormcloak general that she had first met all those months ago in Windhelm.

"Careful, girl."

The words ground out of him like knives being sharpened on a wheel. He tilted his head, looking out from beneath his thick yellow-grey brows at her with an iron glare that would have made a lesser person want to sink down into the stone floor and disappear.

"I care for you, but don't mistake that for weakness. No one speaks treason in my presence and escapes unscathed. Not even you."

The unfairness of the threat jolted Ashildr into anger herself. Ignoring the stabbing ache in her thigh as she took a step towards him, she spread her hands in aggressive mockery and bit back at him savagely.

"Treason? Is it treason now to stand in my own bedchamber with fresh scars from doing Ulfric's business and speak my mind to my _husband_ since I'm now so easily dismissed otherwise?"

Galmar's face flushed a deeper shade of red. He looked as if he were about to burst, pricked by the force of her retort. At the same time, though, she could see that her words had not fallen on deaf ears. His fearocious grimace of wrath turned to a sullen but no less fierce glare as he seemed to master himself once again. He began to pace slowly, measuring the regular strides back and forth between the hearth and bedposts like a caged bear as she had seen him do many, many times in the war camps when laying out discipline or hard news on his officers.

"You've earned the right to speak more freely than most, but there are bounds. You don't disagree with Ulfric in public. You don't cast accusations upon his wife except in private council. And you of all people should know better than to bleed for a pack of Talos-forsaken Cyrodiils and elves that wouldn't shed a tear between them for you if the tables were turned. The only thing to regret there is that we didn't put the rest of their battalion to the axe with them."

It was only then that Ashildr realized what it was that had driven him to rage.

Her criticism had hit too close to old wounds - the old grudge that he had forged and worn like the thickest plate armor since the days of the Great War.

When Galmar thought of the four soldiers that Ulfric had ordered executed that afternoon, she realized, he wasn't thinking of the men or women underneath their Legion lorica. Only his Stormcloaks, only the people that he fought beside and worked to protect, could be allowed to have names and faces and histories. Only their deaths could be seen as tragedy. Once they donned the armor, once they swore the oath to the Emperor, those Legion soldiers were no longer people with lives worth considering. They _were_ the Empire. Every strike against them was a blow to that monstrous foe that Galmar hated more than he loved his own life. Every word that did not condemn them was treachery to his ears.

She stared at him, lost for words in the face of his bitter hatred. Galmar paused, too, glowering back at her.

In his expression, she saw the years of impotent fury as he stood by and watched the Thalmor Inquisitions, the mounting taxes that had all but ruined the northern ports and sent the common folk hungry to their beds, and the political bickering and intrigues that had ripped the country to pieces under the strain. She could see shadows of a much younger legionnaire who had left Skyrim to heed the call of the Emperor only to be sent home broken, robbed even of the ability to worship his god in peace. She could see the foundation that his hatred was built on, freshly exposed, and it broke her heart.

"Was it that bad?" she asked quietly.

Galmar did not have to ask her meaning. She had heard him speak to young recruits, extemporizing on the evils of the Empire and why the war was necessary. They had touched before in their conversations on old battles fought like any comrades in arms, but he had rarely ventured into discussion of the Great War. Few who had fought in that terrible conflict liked to remember it and the nightmares and waking terrors dogged them like carrion vultures. He looked away.

"I forget that you weren't born then. You've never known a time when the Thalmor did not stand with their boots on our throats and Talos could be worshipped freely without fear of the Inquisitors."

He ran a hand over his hair, pausing with his fingers wrapped around the back of his head as he closed his eyes. The lines on his face deepened with strain.

"Let me tell you about the War. There was a girl in the Legion, a shield-sister of mine and Ulfric's. She was the first I had ever loved - the only one until you. Strong. Stubborn. A big heart and a fierce spirit. She, Ulfric, and I - we swore blood oaths to come through it together. We would be parted only by death. We poured everything into the fight. Every day there were less of our friends and comrades around us. Even Ulfric was captured and tortured before it was over, but he escaped."

Ashildr listened as Galmar's words filled the room. Her breath caught in her throat as the harrowing images filled her mind.

"And then, when it was done, we stood together on the day that the conditions of the Concordat were read out. Through all of it, I had never seen my girl weep until the order came down for the shrines of Talos to be broken. I would have married her after the fighting was done, but when Ulfric and I left for Skyrim, no longer able to serve an Emperor who had sold us to our enemies, she stayed behind to honor her oath to the Legion. She kept faith with an Empire that would not keep faith with her instead of with those who loved her. One more thing that they took from us."

The housecarl choked into silence, his words thickening as Ashildr watched him struggle for control over his voice. She, too, fought the urge to swiftly close the distance between them and lend comfort, but she stayed rooted in fear that such a gesture would only hurt him worse. At last, he exhaled a deep breath and collected himself.

"If you pity Tullius his coward's death, remember that it was my axe that killed Rikke that day when Dour fell. I knew when this all started that she would throw her life away for the Legion in the end. The Divines, in their twisted wisdom, fated it to me to send her to Sovngarde. I take no pleasure in it, but I make no apologies for it. If she had walked away, Ulfric and I would have embraced her gladly with open arms, but she made herself an enemy right until the end. There are days, Ashildr, when you remind me of her."

That last crushing admission seemed to take all of the fight out of the old soldier. His shoulders sagged. Ashildr watched, her eyes stinging, as Galmar walked over to the edge of the bed and lowered himself down with exhausted gravity. He did not look up at her until she stepped towards him, halting a few feet away. His expression was sober, aggrieved, and sad.

She had known that Rikke, Galmar, and Ulfric had served together once. Galmar had spent a long time alone and quiet in the days that followed that seige. Ashildr knew what it was to kill a former comrade. She had given him his space. She would never have imagined what killing the Legate had really meant for him.

"There will never be a day for you and me like there was for Rikke," she asserted, holding his gaze firmly to ensure that he understood and believed her. "I don't know the future, but I can promise you that much."

He nodded, but she could see that he was not entirely convinced.

"Our road isn't always straight and easy," he told her earnestly, his voice smoothed somewhat by her obvious concern. "Come to me when you're troubled. I know Ulfric and what he will listen to and what he will not. Let me help you find a way through it, but understand that there are things I can't hear and actions I can never tolerate no matter the costs. If you care for me, don't force me to make that choice."

The same raw expression that he had worn when he had first seen her enter the palace courtyard that afternoon, bloody and battered, was on his face now. Ashildr knew that she had frightened him today in more ways than one. She stepped forward and reached out her hand to him - the same gesture that he had offered to her earlier, but it was a different question this time. He accepted it. His fingers wrapped tightly around hers and his smile, cramped and pained as it was, was genuine and relieved.

She could feel the axis of their world tipping back into alignment once again. Her concerns about the direction Ulfric was headed in were not resolved, but her fears that they would be entirely ignored were soothed. Galmar was bound into a dense web of loyalty, duty, oaths, and old wounds that he could not leave behind, but he had never discounted her or brushed her away. He had asked for her trust - a chance to show her that she was safe with him and that he would not use that trust to twist her to his will. After all they had been through at this point, she could afford to give him that chance.

"For you," she told him, "I will try. For as long as I can."

She moved in close, giving in to the ever-growing urge to touch him. Her free hand stroked the roughness of his beard and cheek. Eyes that had blazed with anger not long before looked up into hers now with fierce need and he leaned into her hand, covering it with his own calloused palm.

There were words that Galmar deeply wanted to hear her say, though he never pressed her for them. He had made it clear that it was up to her to speak them - not because he wanted them but because she did. She was not there yet. It would be worse to give in to that surrender and then have to drag herself away from it later if the worst happened. Tonight, however, Galmar seemed to understand that the language of her hands stood in for the words and that was enough for him.

"Do you truly believe that Elisif had something to do with the attack today?" he asked her when she had settled down beside him on the edge of the bed.

Ashildr nodded. She had told him everything she could remember about the events of the morning, sparing no details, as they watched the logs burn down in the hearth. He had heard the accounts of others, but not yet her own.

"I don't know if she planned it or if she's a pawn in Adventus' game. I could still be wrong. Maybe she sensed it coming when she walked out of the Temple and decided that an assassin's arrow was the easiest way out. I wouldn't blame her at this point. It all lined up too conveniently, though. She was agitated all morning. She knew something was going to happen. I want to know how and why."

The housecarl considered this and then she saw his eyebrows raise, accepting her conclusion.

"We'll take it to Ulfric in the morning. Let me put it to him as if she's a victim of some political maneuvering. In the meantime, I'll set extra pairs of eyes on her. She won't be leaving the palace until the wedding day. Mara help her if she's involved in this, because an arrow in the heart would have been a merciful death by comparison."

He turned his head to look at her in the dim light of the fire and she felt his hand slide up her back, lingering over the livid arrow mark on her shoulder before traveling up to settle warmly on the column of her neck.

"For a moment today, when they told me that you had been attacked, I thought I had lost you."

"Disappointed?" she asked, trying to insert some levity into what had been a difficult evening. "You could have been a free man again."

His fingers found her chin and turned her face towards his to see him trying to hold a scowl of reproval even as he was visibly fighting a smile.

"Woman, do you know how infuriating you are?"

When she had kissed him - a long and breathless kiss that made the hard day and the argument seem to melt into the dim background - she leaned her cheek on his shoulder as he pulled her comfortably against him and she closed her eyes.

"You like a little trouble in your life, remember?"


End file.
